


White Lines and Blue Veins

by Gyakugire



Category: Death Note
Genre: Alcohol, Derogatory Language, F/M, M/M, Mental Instability, Recreational Drug Use, Torture, Violence, sexual assault during torture, this is not going to be a nice story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-07-25 23:10:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 36,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7550848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gyakugire/pseuds/Gyakugire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He was here, doing this, by himself.</p><p>Mello wasn’t sure if that was infuriating, maddening, or miserable.</p><p>All he knew was that he was fucking alone."</p><p> </p><p>A history of Mello's years in the mafia. Matt/Mello centric.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Exchange LA

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning, this story is going to be extremely dark. It's something I've wished to explore for a while, and something that I've been working on in pieces for a few months now. Enjoy!

She reeked of perfume and powder. Lipstick that’d been in place earlier was smeared around her mouth, and splotched messily on Mello’s cock. 

He forced a groan past clenched teeth, burying fingers in locks of jet black hair. Christ, she wasn’t good looking at all. “Fuck, babe, just like that,” he breathed out, focusing on something, _anything_ that would keep him up. She’s not doing a bad job, but it’s not too great, either.

It’s just warm. 

She hummed against Mello’s cock, and he forced a shudder, rutting his hips against her mouth. 

Fuck, no wonder no one else’d jumped for this job. If he’d known _this_ is what getting one single fucking address entailed, he wouldn’t have signed himself up in the first place. 

She released him with a wet pop, going back down on him one more time with a sloppy moan before moving onto his lap. The noise made him cringe. His skin crawled, and his stomach twisted, telling him to just get _out_.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Mello gasped, exhaling a sigh that she mistook for pleasure. He watched her sink herself down onto him with harsh rolls of her hips and nails in his shoulders. 

Oh, God. God damn it. 

He thrusted his hips up to meet hers, and it’s all warmth with uncomfortable arousal. He’s not turned on, certainly not by her. He pressed kisses to her neck so he won’t have to look her in the eyes, but the smell of perfume on her flesh makes him nauseous. 

_Come on, come on, come on, come on,_ he told himself over and over. 

_Keep it up_ , he begged himself, thrusting harsher, grasping her hips hard enough to bruise. 

She fucking loved it. 

At least that made one of them. 

He came harsh, sudden, surprising even himself when his body jolted, automatically trying to move deeper, his cock pulsing inside of her. 

“ _Abigail_ ,” he gasped for good measure, and she smiled at him from her spot on his lap, caressing his shoulders, running her fingers through his blond locks of hair. He _hated_ that she messed it up. 

She’s _soft_.

Women are all fucking soft. 

Gross. 

Gross gross gross gross gross _gross_

Hands smoothed up her torso and fondled her breasts, mouth moving in to press a kiss to the corner of her mouth. There must be lipstick on his face, now. “Hey, babe,” he gasped out, letting her curl her arms around his body. He must have been at least five years younger than her. “Help me out,” he murmured, breathing against the shell of her ear. 

_Don’t sound like you’re fucking begging_.

She didn’t seem to mind.

No one seemed to mind his age, here. 

Instead, she captured his lips with hers. Her mouth was too wet and her tongue didn’t feel right against his. He didn’t want her. Mello didn’t want her and he didn’t want _any_ woman.

Oh, God, wasn’t this awful.

She’s off of him, leaning into silk sheets and guiding his body _down_.

He couldn’t do it.

Mello really _couldn’t_ fucking do it.

He had to. 

Her thighs were too malleable and the space between her legs was dripping fucking wet. 

Mello cleared his throat, and dared to look back up at her. 

“Give me what I want and I’ll give you anything,” she purred, running a manicured finger over his lips. 

Anything’s the goal, isn’t it?

He said a silent prayer that didn’t really mean anything, and went down on her. 

~

“You get it?” Rod asked over a throwaway phone, while Mello knocked back another mouthful of Listerene and swished it around in his mouth. Tasted like hell. 

No worse than she did.

“Corner of East Broadway and Lindero,” he said after he spat it into the sink. 

“Positive?” 

Mello scowled, and brushed his hair away from his eyes. “Better be fucking right,” he snapped into the phone. God, he did _not_ want to fucking talk about it. 

“What, you sleep with her?”

There’s silence, then laughter from the other end of the line.

At least, Rod could take his attitude humorously. 

_Fucking idiots_ , is all he can think, and snaps a piece of chocolate off of the bar he’d kept in his coat pocket. “Twenty minutes.” 

“Yeah, yeah, see you there, kid.”

He knew he’d gotten the correct information.

Or, hoped he did, because he needed to take a fucking shower to get the feeling of her insides around him just fucking _off_.

Fucking nasty.

This sort of work’s supposed to be for grunts. 

Mello looked at the hickey that worked its way across his throat. It’s ugly, purple, bursting with flecks of red and brown. She was soft.

He hated that. 

Women were just fucking _soft_. He felt slimy. Breaths caught in his throat, and he stared at himself in the mirror. Part of it felt like he wasn’t looking at himself at all. His hands carded through his hair, scratching at his scalp. He stripped off his vest, slid his pants off, and folded them into a neat pile. The shower will be warm, smothering, consuming.

It’s exactly what he needed. 

He took off his boxers.

There’s still mother fucking lipstick on his cock. 

Nauseating.

He swallowed thickly, spread toothpaste on his brush again and rammed it against his teeth, brushing, pushing it around his mouth. He spit out toothpaste, saliva, and blood. Again, mouthwash.

Nasty as shit. His mouth still tasted sour, and he brushed his teeth again. 

_If fuckin’ her doesn’t work, just go down on her for a while and that’ll do the trick_

God damn it, last time he ever listened to any of those fucking assholes. 

He spit, rinsed his mouth again, and pulled back the shower curtain. Exhausted, skin still crawling, he leaned against the shower wall, letting the stream of water pound against his back. It’s hot. 

Perfect.

~

Rod pushed a double wrapped bag of white powder across the sofa cushion. Zebra striped, it stood out harsh against the rest of the furniture. 

Fucking perfect.

Mello plucked the bag up between his thumb and his forefinger, holding it close to his face. Condensed, but a decent amount. More than enough to kill him, and one hundred percent more than what he wanted. “What’s this?”

“A reward.”

Mello wrinkled his nose. Drugs were always tricky. And drugs as favors were even worse. “For what?” he asked, rolling the thing around between gloved fingers. Cocaine, probably. Hell, at least that meant his work yesterday had been successful. 

Better have fucking been. He took solace in the thought that at the very least, Abigail was six feet under, buried by the river like everyone else the family’d taken care of. In Los Angeles, everyone knew, but no one said a word.

“How’s she in bed?”

“Shit.”

Rod snorted, and poured himself a glass of wine. What a thing, for a sixteen year old to say. Wasn’t even like he’d had much experience, either. “Want a glass?” 

Mello shook his head. “Maybe later.”

“Right. At least take your gram for a spin,” he said, nodding towards the bag.

Not a fucking good idea. He’d prefer the wine. 

He slid it back towards Rod. “I don’t do favors.” Anything that could bite him in the ass later wasn’t really worth it now. 

The man barks out a laugh, and slides it towards Mello again. “Smart, kid. That’s why you’re doin’ well.” He pushes the thing into Mello’s hand, and closes his fingers around it. “It’s not a favor. Just look at it like you’re testing the product.”

Mello swallowed. 

This really wasn’t a good fucking idea. Weed’s sticky, coke is stickier. But Rod’s already cutting him a few lines, and he realized that he didn’t have much of a choice. Either grow a pair now, or get kicked in them later. 

Mello took the straw, and leaned in. It went up harsh, stinging, ripping at his nose and coaxing out blood. He almost laughed, catching his nostril with a gloved finger. He watched with morbid fascination, half of his nose stinging, while thick drops of crimson splattered over the glass beneath him. 

“Shit, kid, it’s been a while since I’ve seen somethin’ like that.”

A girl grabbed him a wet cloth, and he dabbed his face off. Fucking gross. Mello could hear his heartbeat in his ears, and he looked at Rod, eyes wide, and realizing, slowly, that he had another line to do. A fucking long thing, awful, pure white and stretched out in front of him. 

This stuff could kill him.

But he snorted it, and he’s gasping, wiping at his face, pressing the cloth to his nostril just in case. The blood stopped by now, and then the high fucking hit. 

He was sure his pupils were dilated. 

Oh, shit, this was fucking bad. His head spun, and his body needed to fucking move.

Shit, he was fucking high.

“The bust at Lindero’ll help us at Exchange this week.” 

“Yeah,” Mello forced out, and now, he’s hyper focused, to the point that his mind is racing about the fucking fold in the couch rather than what Rod’s actually saying. 

But he didn’t feel too fucking bad.

“Someone from the family runs it?” Mello asked, leaning against the armrest. 

Rod nodded, draining his glass of wine. “Someone good. It’s just debt collection, next week.”

“Someone owe us?” 

“Yeah, a sorry son of a bitch from Santa Monica.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Yeah?”

“Anything you need,” Mello said, and he let his head roll to the side. He felt like he was moving. Like the room was moving.

He must have been doing _something_ , because Rod was looking right at him, laughing his fucking ass off. Ain’t this the way it always fucking is. He rubbed his nose again, wincing at the prickling numbness, and suddenly, inexplicably, he was relaxed. Energized, but fucking good. 

Three hours later, he felt like shit. 

Hell, he hadn’t even realized three hours had passed.

There he still was, sprawled out on that same fucking Zebra couch, pupils dilated and his heart beating so fast that it was actually making him nauseous. 

Mello felt like he was going to die. 

Holy shit, he felt like he was going to fucking _die_.

He sprung up, way too fucking fast. Rod wasn’t there.

He needed to go home.

Mello already knew he couldn’t drive like this. 

“Holy fucking shit,” he grumbled, but his voice was thick, catching in his throat and ringing in his ears. “Rod?” he called out, making his way to the stairs with his hand on the wall for support. 

Too fucking fast. 

Then, everything fucking hit him all at once. 

He slept with a girl, and then they killed her.

Mello _slept_ with a fucking _girl_.

In the back of his mind, he knew that was probably the lesser thing to be upset over. But it made anxiety rip through his chest, and he felt fucking disgusting all over again. 

Mello didn’t have enough comprehension to piece together that _this_ , likely, was a panic attack. 

“ _Rod_!” he yelled, halfway up the fucking stairs before he tripped over his own feet and his face was against metal flooring. It stung, and his knees throbbed where they connected with the ground. It hurt, but the initial sensation was dull.

Thank Christ, Mello could hear someone clunking down the stairs.

“Kid? _Kid_ , what the _fuck_.” 

Yeah, that was Rod. Hands pulled him up by the shoulders, and his nose was fucking bloody again from the impact. 

Jesus fucking Christ.

It dripped down his face in thick lines, sticking to his lips and spreading metallic crimson over his tongue. He groaned.

“I need to go.”

No fucking _shit_ , he needed to go home. 

“Kid, chill, you just did too much. ’S going to pass.”

And who’s fault was that? Mello didn’t say anything, just let Rod hoist him up and hand him a cloth. He just stared at it, and Rod probably figured that he wasn’t about to let this kid get blood all over his white, pressed suit, so he guided Mello’s hand to his face and made him wipe it away. 

“I need t’ go home,” Mello said again, and Rod seemed to catch the hint this time.

Fucking idiot.

“Your place is twenty away?”

Mello nodded. Yeah, something like that. He rasped out the address, and from there, the ride home was silent.

He wouldn’t let Rod walk him up to the door.

Mello stumbled back into the apartment, back cracking against the door as soon as he got it shut and locked. Oh, he felt like shit. Wasn’t that a fucking joke? He knew this was coming. He fucking _knew_ it. His body itched, and his skin was fucking clammy as all hell. Crawling. He sunk to the ground, and he could _feel_ his heart all over again. 

He sobbed.

At first, he didn’t even realize he was. It wasn’t until the hot tears streaking down his face turned frigid, and his nose clogged itself up, throat closing to try and block out the tears. Legs spread and face buried in his hands, he felt like a fucking child.  
And hell, wasn’t he? 

Mello pulled himself to his feet, hand supporting himself against the wall while he made his way to the shower. 

The water fucking stung like needles against his skin. Kisses that felt more like stabbing, Mello hissed, snapping the water off and sinking to the porcelain floor. It hit him then, in the center of his chest, exactly what he was feeling.

Mello was alone.

He was alone, coming down from a fucking strong high on the floor of his shower. Crying like a fucking bitch.

And he was here, doing this, by himself.

Mello wasn’t sure if that was infuriating, maddening, or miserable.

All he knew was that he was fucking _alone_.

~

Exchange didn’t bother with an I.D. 

One look at Rod, and he was in. Everyone knew his name around here. Mello, Rod’s favorite guy. Mello, that kid that’s always right. Mello, that kid that’ll shoot anyone’s brains out that looks at him the wrong way.

Rod told everyone to just look for the kid with a nasty look in his eyes. 

Hey, whatever worked. 

Mello didn’t give a shit what they said about him.

Scotch on the rocks tasted awful, but it did what it was supposed to. A hell of a lot better than cocaine. He loved the way alcohol sat in the center of his chest, then his stomach, prickling warmth all the way through him and out to the tips of his fingers. 

Jonathan Kilaney was a son of a bitch, apparently. He waited, lingering by the bar, until he spotted starch blond hair, a too dark beard, and a nice set of eyes. 

He wasn’t bad looking.

Not really good looking either.

Mello would kiss him if he had to. Apparently, Zakk said, Jonathan swung the other way. Better than Abigail. At least he had a nice looking jawline. He’ll corner him, ask him for the money.

If he refused, it’s a bullet through the skull. Simple enough. 

Mello cracked his neck, and took another sip.

A hand found its way to his ass.

Mello didn’t even look before swinging on his heel and throwing a punch. Had to’ve been a guy, no way a woman would touch him like that. Well, not here, anyway. The alcohol told him it was a grand fucking idea. 

The alcohol also told him to grab the perpetrator by the hair and drag him back to his feet.

Fucking Jonathan Kilaney.

Forget about the fucking money.

In the alley behind the club, he slammed Kilaney’s head against brick, satisfied at the crunch of his nose against the wall. Zakk told him to maybe cool it the fuck down. 

Rod wasn’t even there for another ten minutes.

Mello pulled the trigger without even thinking. And it was a fucking mess. Blood splattered across the pavement, and the sound of the bullet releasing was more than enough to echo through the alleyway.

Zakk’s the cleanup guy. 

“Could’ve at least tried to go for someplace that wouldn’t splatter,” he told Mello, and the blond jammed his gun back into his pocket. 

“Fucking fag shouldn’t have put his hands on me,” Mello spat, and Zakk didn’t disagree. An excuse and a cover. Hey, that was more than enough for him. 

“Man, we’ve got company.” 

Not cops. No sirens, no shouting. Maybe better this way, maybe worse. It wouldn’t be the first shootout with the authorities he’d had. 

Rod wouldn’t have wasted time saying anything. They would have just gotten the fuck out of there. 

Mello sighed. Someone must have followed them out. There were two options. Either shoot as soon as he turned around, or at least look behind him to see who he was going to be firing at.

“Just a stupid lookin’ kid,” Zakk says from behind him. A kid? Couldn’t have followed him from the bar, then. With gloved hands, he pulled at the hood of his coat, letting it fall to his shoulders. He breathed through his nose. He was heavily buzzed by now, and absolutely _not_ in the mood for this. Spinning on his heel, he already had his pistol out. 

“Behind me?”

“Around the corner.”

Jesus, what the fuck. “Come out. Won’t blow your brains out if your hands are up.” Reasonable enough, right? Mello still flicked the Beretta’s safety off.

Boots thunked against wet pavement, and a figure nearly the same size as he is turned the corner. 

Mello froze.

Thank fucking Christ he didn’t shoot.

“Mel?” 

Three letters. That’s all it took for his jaw to hang like a fucking idiot. In an instant, everything he’d tried to forget came crashing against him, embodied in a five and a half foot asshole with a wrinkled shirt and stupid looking fucking goggles covering his eyes. 

Oh, come the _fuck_ on. 


	2. Best Friends?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You told me you’d write,” Matt said, barely able to breathe, and he’s not really sure where that’s coming from at all. Mello, apparently, didn’t have a clue either. He froze, staring down at Matt with wide eyes and a hanging jaw. 
> 
> “I fucking lied. Go away.”
> 
> Matt thought it’d be funny to flash Mello a bloody grin. 
> 
> Mello thought it would be funny to whip his pocket knife open again and slice open one of Matt’s nostrils.

At LAX, the first thing Matt did was crack open a new package of Marlboro’s and inhaled until nicotine settled in heavy swirls inside of his stomach. His goggles helped—he’s still no good at blowing this shit away from his face. It burned his nostrils and made him cough like a fucking chain smoker, but _God_ did he need a smoke. 

He answered the junk phone blaring in his pocket with a sigh of bitter tasting exhale and a stiff grunt. “Yeah?”

“Good, you’re there in one piece.” Near. The same dick that insisted he travel halfway across the world to “keep an eye on what’s going on over there.” Whatever the hell that meant. 

Matt said sure, because he had nothing better to do. 

Plus, Mello was involved. That made it interesting, if nothing else.

“Yeah.” 

“He’ll be around tonight.”

“You sure?”

“Not really.” 

“It’s Mello, he’s predictable,” Matt said, but he didn’t really know if that meant anything.  
“Is he?”

Matt snorted, because he really didn’t fucking know anymore. He’d been, as a child. Wide eyes, all tears and all temper, studying until he couldn’t see straight and crying until his throat hurt. 

Mello, as rash as he was, became just as predictable when he rebounded. 

“Well, I guess we’ll find out.”

“Sure.”

“Should I keep in touch with you after I confirm contact?”

“No, I don’t think Mello would like that.”  
“I don’t think so, either.”

That’d be a no go, with the track record he dug up. Something about the mafia, shootings, gang fights, basement brawls, drug trafficking and everything in between. No, keeping in contact with Near meant a bullet in his head and a shovel to dig his own grave. 

Mello, no matter which way they looked at it, wasn’t someone to fuck with.

It wasn’t a paper trail that had gotten them here. That shit, as they learned at the orphanage, was easy to cover.

It’s the surveillance cameras. Because yeah, you can hide yourself. 

But for how long?

Mello was aware, though, of the Kira situation. Sunglasses always on his face, diverting just enough, protecting himself _just enough._

If Matt hadn’t known him before, he wouldn’t have been able to pick him out in a crowd. Always slinking at the edges of streets, pressed to city walls and store fronts to avoid unnecessary contact. 

“Think he’ll be happy to see you?”

Matt barked out a laugh. “Who the fuck cares.”

~~

Express LA was too fucking crowded and too fucking loud.

Matt rolled his shoulder. He had a joint before he came in, and a cute girl with chestnut brown hair bought him a couple of drinks. 

By the time he caught sight of Mello, he was trashed. That was fine, because for close to an hour, Mello just lingered, wandering back and forth near the bar, talking to no one in particular. 

This wasn’t the place to try and catch his attention. Or, maybe it was, but he’d have to wait until he could walk in a straight line first. 

Matt didn’t have a choice the moment he saw his old friend throw a punch at the man behind him, and drag him mercilessly towards the back exit of the club. 

_God damn it,_ he had to follow. 

On numb legs, he tracked Mello out of the place, pressing his back to the cool brick around the corner.

He heard the gun go off, and knew that it was probably Mello.

Jesus Christ.

And when someone blew his cover, he was just about ready to run. This was a shit situation. But instead, he turned the corner with his hands up like Mello had asked, his posture a little slouched and his eyes trying hard to focus on the boy in front of him. 

It was dark, and with his goggles, it was kind of hard to see very much. 

Mello was wearing all black. His hair was longer, definitely, and there was a Beretta in his left hand. 

Shit. 

“Mel?”

His posture didn’t change in the slightest. Hell, he didn’t even speak. He just stared, and Matt took that as some sort of permission, and he inched his way towards Mello, hands still up, mouth twisting into a half smile. 

“Been a while, right?”

Mello’s lips stayed pursed shut. 

Okay, not going as well as planned. Mello reeked of whisky and Matt reeked of cigarettes. It seemed like a pretty fucking good combo. 

Mello wrinkled his nose. Apparently, he didn’t think so. Only inches from the blond, Matt let his hands fall to his sides. He had a gun in his back pocket, but the other boy would have blown him sky high before he even had a chance to put his hand on it. “These your friends?”

“Sure.”

“I missed you.”

Mello’s eyes widened ever so slightly, and Matt, stupid fucking Matt, held an arm out for a hug. He didn’t really know what to expect. 

The butt of Mello’s gun whipped against his temple, and a gasp barely made its way from his lips before his face hit the pavement. 

Above him, he heard Mello click his tongue in distaste.

“Mello, man, who the fuck’s this?”

“Just a nobody. Let’s go.”

~~

Mello nearly cracked his skull open. He woke up to a damp cloth against his temple, the owner of the bar telling him that fuck, man, that was a close one. No one should be around now, they’ve been fucking around the streets of LA for too long. 

Matt already knew who “they” were. The family owned this bar—everyone of status knew that. Everyone also knew that the authorities wouldn’t do shit about it. 

After all, the family took out Guitano Amondra in the blink of an eye. No one found the body for weeks, and no one really cared. 

Matt just so happened to get mixed up in the wrong crowd. An accident. Sure, if they wanted to tell him that’s what it was.  
Matt opened his mouth to rasp out a bleary thanks, and asked for a cigarette. He’d had his last one between his lips on the way down, and it burned out on the pavement. Hell, he was lucky it hadn’t landed on his shirt. 

Man, too bad he got caught up in this shit. At least his rescuer—sort of—felt bad enough to give him a smoke. The bartender lit him a cig, and commented that he must not be from around here.

Yeah, Matt agreed. Must not be. 

He smoked, and this guy sat with him, nursing his throbbing temple and potential concussion, and asked for a name.

“Matt.”

“Reeves.”

“Reeves,” Matt repeated with a nod. “Well, thanks for the butt, Reeves.” His voice was well beyond his years. Unlike Mello, he’d hit puberty early, currently covered in a few days worth of stubble and a voice that'd stopped cracking a handful of months ago. The smokes helped, too. 

“Yeah. Where you staying around here?”

Matt shrugged. “Don’t know yet.” That sounded fucking stupid. At this time, where was he going to find someplace? Maybe, he could nab a car. Couldn’t remember for the life of him if Near had set up a place for him.

Probably not. This wasn’t according to the plan.

“How ‘bout my place, for the night?” 

Matt cocked his head, and breathed out a huff of smoke through loosely cracked lips. 

“Yeah, sure.”

~~

He woke up livid. 

Matt’s temple throbbed, a headache roared right behind his eyes. Fucking hungover and beaten the shit out of. Grand. Reeves was in bed beside him, still naked, eyes fluttering open lazily when he heard Matt shifting the covers off of himself.

“You stayed?”

“Got hit harder than I thought.”

“That guy looked like an asshole.” 

Matt snorted. “He is an asshole.” 

“What’s the plan?” 

“I’ll follow him.”

“The asshole?”

Matt shrugged. “Got nothin’ better to do.” 

Reeves lit up a smoke, and offered Matt another. He gratefully accepted it, leaning in to dip it into the lighter between the older man’s fingers. Absentmindedly, he wondered if Reeves could tell Matt wasn’t as far ahead as he’d mentioned. That I.D. was an obvious fake, something he’d fucked around with in his spare time and figured he’d give a shot. 

Maybe, Reeves just didn’t give a damn. 

He inhaled hard, letting the smoke seep into his lungs. 

“You’re not just here to hit the beaches.”

Matt laughed. “No.”

“What for, then?”

“Business.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Wanna talk about it?” 

Matt breathed smoke rings towards the ceiling. “Nah.” 

“Okay.”

“It’s fine. Getting roped into a lot of shit these days.”

“Seems it.”

He smiled at Reeves, and the bartender just stared. He leaned, and Matt didn’t budge, letting lips fall against his and a hand smooth across his chest. It tasted like smoke and the lingering staleness of shitty beer. Matt tongued back, and flicked the ash off his cigarette with a tap of his finger. 

“You’re a good guy,” Reeves said, slow, tired, his eyes seeming to devour the younger man’s features. 

“You mean I’m a good fuck.”

Reeves barked out a laugh. “You’ve got a sense of humor.”

“I should get going.”

“Sure.”

Matt pulled his clothes back on, and smoothed his hands through his hair. He could use a shower, but he needed to get moving. God only knew where Mello was by now. Hopefully not far, potentially across the country. But the family didn’t move too much, and Matt was hoping his childhood friend would stick close to its hip. 

He slipped his scuffed boots on, heels already worn down from dragging his feet. “Know anyone that deals around here?”

“I got three grams of coke, a bottle of xanax, and a couple hits of heroin.”

“That’s cool,” Matt hummed, and fished for his wallet. He pulled a wad of green bills out, far above market price, and held it towards Reeves. Near didn’t need to know what the fuck he was doing with his cash. “Can I have it? And a pack, if you’ve got it.”

“Shit, man, you can take whatever the fuck you want.”

~

It hit him, high as hell in the parking lot of a greasy looking 7/11. Leg sprawled out on the pavement and back pressed to the brick of the convenience store, Matt looked like he was fucking cooked.

Mello really was a real fucking douchebag. And if he thought he was going to be able to get rid of Matt just like that, he was in for something else. After the heroin, it took a total of thirty seven minutes to track down Mello’s apartment. 

Nothing he couldn’t do in his sleep. 

He was up on his feet, packing a bag with god only knows what, and he’s out the door, cursing up a storm and throwing his shit into the car he stole outside of Reeve’s place. He didn’t know where the hell was going, so he went back on his computer, looked up directions, and started the ignition. He didn’t have a license. He knew how to drive, _kind of_ , and he crossed his fingers that he wouldn’t get pulled over. 

Matt was going to fucking kill him.

Mello fucking sucked, but there was adrenaline in the back of his mouth, and he was driving his car too damned fast, and shit, was that a red light? He yanked his goggles down around his neck, swearing to himself for a hour through rush hour traffic until he pulled over on the side of the road in what he hoped was a parking space, and got walking.

Matt stomps down the street of Mello’s apartment, cigarette clamped between his lips. Mello’s a fucking pain in the ass, he always had been, so why does any of this come as a surprise?

Mello was a reckless shit.

It’s a shitty ass part of town, but that didn’t surprise him. It’d draw too much attention for a minor to live expensively. Matt trudged up stairs that seem like they’d break under his feet, heard screams from fighting couples, wailing children, and thought to himself _how the fuck did Mello end up here_.

A fucking nuisance. 

He kicked at the door, Apt. 207, in the shithole slums of Los fucking Angeles, and he heard cursing on the other side of the door—no doubt Mello—and the thing swung open, revealing a cropped leather vest, tight pants, leather, rosaries, flashed skin, wide eyes, and pursed lips. “Matt?” 

“Hey,” he breathed out, his usual crooked smile making its way to his lips. Goggles fastened over his eyes, Mello was amber. Everything was amber. He wasn’t sure if he preferred it, but hey, it’d have to do. 

Mello was pulling him inside, looking both ways and crashing the door shut.

Matt beat him to the punch, though.

He grabbed Mello by the hair and pulled down, and the blond recoiled, throwing his weight forward and slamming Matt into the doorframe. It turned into a full blown struggle, flailing limbs and labored breathing until Matt had the blond’s weight pinning him down and a knife against his throat.

“How the fuck did you get here,” Mello hissed, catching his breath and staring at Matt with that same fucking bored expression.

Matt wasn’t in the mood to talk. Pissed turned into fucking seething, and his hand slipped between his throat and the blade. Mello pulled and Matt bled. 

He didn’t give a fuck. 

Mello was a punk and Matt was could be a nasty son of a bitch if he wanted to be. 

His fist dug into Mello’s throat, then his gut, and he was keeling over, hands not knowing where to clutch. 

It shouldn’t have been this easy. Good thing Mello didn’t like to disappoint. He rebounded quick, furious, his hands clinging to Matt and tugging him forward to dig a knee into stomach once, twice. 

Matt vomited all over the fucking floor. 

God damn it, he was seeing red he was so fucking mad.

“Get the _fuck_ out,” Mello snapped, digging the steel toe of his boot more than intentionally into Matt’s chest. His body heaved again, and he swore he could see Mello’s lips twist into the faintest hint of a smile.

“No.”

Mello brought his leg back, and kicked.

It stung, shooting through Matt’s ribs and making him grit his teeth against his tongue. His gasp turned into a desperate choke, and Mello brought his leg back again.

This wasn’t good.

_Mello’s predictable_.

What the fuck had made him think that?

“You told me you’d write,” Matt said, barely able to breathe, and he’s not really sure where that’s coming from at all. Mello, apparently, didn’t have a clue either. He froze, staring down at Matt with wide eyes and a hanging jaw. 

“I fucking lied. Go away.”

Matt thought it’d be funny to flash Mello a bloody grin. 

Mello thought it would be funny to whip his pocket knife open again and slice open one of Matt’s nostrils. 

“What the _fuck_ man!” Matt screamed, and he was trying to roll over, but Mello was on the ground with him, holding him in a headlock and cutting of his airway. 

“What did I just say?”

“ _Fuck you_! You fucking _prick_ , my fucking nose!” 

What made Matt freeze was the look in Mello’s eyes when he finally wrestled himself free.

The aggression he displayed was nowhere to be found in his posture. 

Unpredictable.

Wild.

Mello’s eyes were wide, but the did little to express the pent up rage that was no doubt coursing through him. His breathing was even, and Matt realized that his childhood friend had been trained for this. 

Matt, right now, was an opponent.

Nothing more, nothing less. 

The Matt from Wammy’s House was in Mello’s past. Right now, he was an obstacle. And from Matt had found in the thousands of databases he’d gone scrounging through, it was that Mello didn’t _do_ obstacles. 

“What the fuck got a stick shoved this far up your ass?” Matt asked, letting the blood make its way down his face. He didn’t give a fuck. He was about to find out if Mello’d kill him. 

Probably.

Whatever. 

Mello didn’t hit him again. Instead, he watched, and let Matt inch himself up into a sitting position, his arms curling around his own torso. He must have looked pathetic, with blood smeared across his face and a busted fucking lip. Cut his own damned tongue open too.

“You turned into a real fuckin’ cocksucker, didn’t you?” Mello snapped back.

Matt laughed. Never thought he’d hear those words come out of Mello’s mouth. The fluctuation of his chest stung, and he took a shaky breath to calm himself down. This wasn’t a good situation. His anger was gone, replaced with a thick cloud of apprehension and an even thicker smear of adrenaline in the back of his mouth. 

Mello breathed through his nose, and pulled himself to his feet. “I don’t—“

“Have time, I get it.”

“So leave.”

“I won’t.”

“Matt, _go_.”

“ _No_.” And Matt swallowed, knowing that he shouldn’t keep testing his luck. “Fuck, dude, I already know you’re working with the mob.”

That caught Mello’s attention. “What?”

“Come on, Mel.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“I want to help.” Sure, that was one way to put it. Help, keep an eye on him, didn’t make too much of a difference, as long as it sounded nice. “Good with computers now, y’know?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Mello snapped, but his voice dropped, and Matt tried to give him another smile. This time, after rubbing his tongue over his teeth and swallowing most of the blood. But Matt knew that he’d caught Mello’s attention. It was something he needed. They didn’t have a hacker, and with Matt, they’d be able to get most of what they needed with ease.

And, he knew how to cover his tracks. That was always a plus.

“Talk to me.”

Mello, for whatever reason, walked into the kitchen. Processing the situation, probably. “We’ll talk, and you’re going to have to give me a damned good fucking reason not to shoot you.”

“I missed you,” Matt forced out of his aching throat. He didn’t need to know shit about Near. 

“Mhm? And you’re acting like a careless son of a bitch because of that?” Mello pulled two beers out of the fridge, and paced around with the caps still screwed on. “Don’t even know what the fuck you walked into yesterday, do you?”

Maybe he’d beat Matt over the head with one of them.

“How’s Guitano?” Throw in enough info to show he was serious. After all, Matt could list off every damned place Mello’d been off the top of his head. And in a shitty, beat up notebook in his backpack, he had even more. 

Mello froze in his tracks. 

“Excuse me?”

“Let’s not play stupid, Mel.”

“How did—“ But they both knew how, already.

Matt eased himself onto his feet. Felt like shit. Wanted to wash his face. Mello’s eyes still didn’t fucking change. Man, he was good at keeping his cool. The fuck happened to his temper? “You wanna see what I’ve got written up? I’ve got every bit of movement tracked back to the second you left the orphanage.”

“How traceable.” Mello sat at the couch, legs spread and torso hunched forward, one hand on the arm rest and the other clutching the two beers. “Clean your fucking mess up.”

Matt did as he was told. 

“Not very.”

“Would anyone else be able to?”

“Doubt it.” Matt sighed, and Mello motioned to a spot on the couch. He wasn’t sure whether or not to accept, but then, when his gaze made its way up to Mello’s eyes, he realized he didn’t have much of a choice. Mello twisted the cap off one of the beers, and handed it to him. “Like I said, I wanted to help.”

Nice stuff. The beer was bitter going down, but warm in his chest. 

“You reek.”

“Didn’t shower this morning.”

“I was talking about the smoke.”

“Oh.”

“Cigs?” Mello drawled, but the tone in his voice was bitter, letting the word roll around in his mouth with distaste. 

That pricked a sudden flare of rage in Matt’s gut. “None of your damned business.”

Mello slammed the beer against his coffee table, and the bottom gave out, spilling amber fluid all over the wooden surface and onto the floor.

Matt flinched.


	3. Keep it Cool

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He was dropped off at a safe house, extra bullets in his coat pocket and his beretta strapped to his hip. A red car, chipped with a dent on the left side of the bumper, waited in the grass behind the house. 
> 
> There would be a woman in the car. 
> 
> She was twenty two years old, daughter of Vincent Burns. Between the two of them, two hundred pounds of marijuana had gone missing, and they wouldn’t pay up. Her father had the money, she just had the pretty face. 
> 
> And Mello was just holding the gun.

_I missed you._

_You wanna see what I’ve got written up? I’ve got every bit of movement tracked back to the second you left the orphanage._

_Good with computers now, y’know?_

Mello’s head was a whirlwind of white hot anger the minute Matt had caught a handful of hair and jerked him forward. If it was a fight he wanted, then it was a fight he’d get. And it felt fucking _rich_. Blood seeped out of the cut through Matt’s nostril, dripping in thick lines over his lips, across his teeth, down his chin. 

He knew he should have felt guilty.

Mello almost wanted to cut him again.

The mention of those letters—something he thought the both of them knew was bullshit from the start—froze him. Dragged him out of that mindset, and forced him to stare down at this man writhing on his floor. This _boy_ , really, with orange goggles, ginger hair, and freckled skin. 

He could throw a few punches now, but Matt was still Matt.

Still a reckless fucking idiot.

He could have just shot him.

But Matt, he realized as they say on the couch, and he pulled the papers out of his backpack with suddenly timid hands, was useful. 

“You’ll work out of your apartment?” Mello asked, flipping through the papers one more time. It was everything. Every single fucking thing he’d done since he’d stepped foot out of the orphanage’s grasp was here. Everything, down to what coffee he ordered, what clothes he wore, what clubs he went to. Everything. 

Matt was fucking _good_. 

Minus those stupid goggles.

He’d forgotten, almost, what it meant to be raised at Wammy’s. 

And Matt, it seemed, knew what he was getting himself into. 

When his childhood friend never responded, Mello cracked open another beer on the edge of the coffee table, and let his eyes snap to the side. “There a fuckin’ problem?”

“I, uh…well, the apartment, uh…”

“You’ve been couch surfing.”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Mello murmured, rubbing at the bridge of his nose with a gloved hand. “And what the fuck, then, were you planning to do if I kicked you on your ass?” 

Goggles.

Matt shrugged. “I knew you wouldn’t.”

“I’m two seconds from changing my mind.”

“Then you’ll shoot me, and it won’t make a damned bit of difference if I have a place to stay or not.” 

At least, Matt caught on quick. 

Stupid fucking _goggles_.

“Take those fucking things off.”

Matt just shot him a look.

“Take the _fucking_ goggles off!” Mello snapped, his voice ice, harsh, ringing in his own ears. Matt’s hands fluttered up, scrambling to rip them off of his head without a second thought. “Look’t me,” he drawled out, slow, even, the sudden flash of anger suppressing itself. 

Matt’s head rolled to the side. 

His _eyes_.

At Wammy’s, he’d had great big, green eyes. Always bright, always shining, even though he preferred to keep to himself. Mello swallowed thickly. His eyes were manic, perturbed, the bags underneath a bruised purple, while his pupils darted this way and that, trying to focus on one thing at a time. 

Mello could tell that look from a mile away. The same kind of look those sons of bitches that wandered the Methadone Mile had. 

When?

How?

“All I’ve got is this,” Mello murmured, still taken aback, motioning to the living room that was connected to the kitchen, and then the shut door that led to his bedroom and the bathroom. 

“I’m not asking to stay.”

Matt was already under his skin. They both knew he was too far in to get kicked out.

Mello wanted to punch him again. 

It was still Matt. What was that supposed to mean?

It was a soft spot. Weakness.

Mello knew that.

He’d never acknowledge it. 

“How long will it take you to set up?”

“Just today.”

Mello was furious, that Matt thought he could just waltz the fuck in, pick a fistfight, sit his ass down on the couch and work his way right back into his life. He could kill him. He could _fucking_ kill him. 

“Matt.”

“Mhm?” he grunted, his lips pressed to the opening of his beer bottle. Mello watched the beer from his own seep into the cracks between the flooring.

“There was a boy that used to work for us. Scott. He was a good guy, y’know?”

Matt just blinked. Good enough.

“Great guy, did all our books, kept everything clean. Every last little fucking thing we asked him. And y’know what happened to him?”

Matt’s mind seemed to scan his mental memory banks, and he rolled his head to look at the ceiling. “Dead, right?”

“You know why?” Mello’s voice dropped, eyes widening ever so slightly. He picked up his open beer bottle, examining the shattered edges dangerously close to his face.

He could see Matt starting to fidget. Yeah, now he was catching on. 

“Took a look at him one day, and I decided I didn’t like his face. So I took him out back, slashed his cheek open, and put a bullet through his head. Rod didn’t give a fuck, so no one else gave a fuck.”

Matt’s eyes were wide, locked on him. 

It made him look even freakier.

“Are we clear?”

“Crystal.”

His leg was shaking like a leaf.

~

Mello slammed on the gas, shooting between lanes of traffic on the interstate. The back roads were shit, and it was way too fucking hot for his leather jacket, but the speed combined with the wind whipping in his face helped a decent amount. 

Matt stayed at the apartment. He said he’d get the equipment and set it up by the time Mello got back. 

As long as he could do his damned job, he didn’t give two shits. 

His eyes still sat in the back of Mello’s head. 

He looked like shit. 

Maybe it was a concussion.

No time to worry about that now. 

He pushed Matt out of his head, and pulled up to headquarters, helmet tucked under his arm as he made his way inside. Rod was already there, that same damned white suit pressed to a t . “Yo,” Mello greeted, chucking the helmet onto the couch, watching it land against the cushion with a dull thud. 

“Man, you’re late. Got home troubles, now?” 

Mello wasn’t in the mood for a joke. He threw himself across from Rod, landing on one of the recliners near the striped couch. “Don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Have to do with your friend?” 

Mello sighed. “Do you have any wine?” 

“Lee, get him a glass, will ya?” Rod nudged the girl beside him, and she padded across the room, to the fridge stuffed into the corner. “New acquaintance?” 

“Old acquaintance, new problem.”

“What, your parents friends when you were younger?”

Mello snorted, nodding at Lee as he took the glass of wine. “We’re both orphans.”

“Sorry,” Lee murmured, and sat back beside Rod. He wrapped an arm around her, pulled her close. 

“Doesn’t matter. What’s the deal with those Irish fucks?” 

Rod laughed, downing half his glass in one go. “Want ‘em out.”

“Got it.”

“You're the man for the job?” 

“Always,” Mello said, smirking against the rim of his glass. He drank, swallowing despite the biting taste. 

Oddly enough, he preferred liquor.

“He seemed happy to see you.”

“Let the past stay in the past.”

Maybe, Mello should’ve taken his own advice.

~

Rod’s car was nice. 

Better have been, for all the money they had running through them. Mello leaned into the leather passenger seat, kicking his legs up on the dashboard. Rod didn’t give a fuck what he did. After all, Mello was the reason he could afford the fucking car in the first place. Mello propped his head up against the window, and his eyes drooping shut. 

He was dropped off at a safe house, extra bullets in his coat pocket and his beretta strapped to his hip. A red car, chipped with a dent on the left side of the bumper, waited in the grass behind the house. 

There would be a woman in the car. 

She was twenty two years old, daughter of Vincent Burns. Between the two of them, two hundred pounds of marijuana had gone missing, and they wouldn’t pay up. Her father had the money, she just had the pretty face. 

And Mello was just holding the gun. 

He unlocked the door, and she’s tied, blindfolded, kicking and screaming in the back seat. By now, she should have known to be quiet. In the cup holder, there’s a chilled beer waiting for him. 

Because Zakk had to take his girlfriend on a date, Mello’s in charge of cleanup. 

For now, Kira was on the back burner. Near hadn’t moved an inch, and Mello was in no rush to play such a dangerous game. Drug deals, weapon smuggling, and kidnapping would do for now. Whatever it would take to give his reputation a boost. 

Near had the inheritance already. Mello needed the family in order to catch up. They trusted his opinion, but they didn’t trust his spontaneity. 

And that’s all it’d been, since he’d left Wammy’s—a huge game of catch up, chasing after a boy that should’ve been two years behind. 

She kept screaming and slamming into the back of his seat. God damn it, wasn’t that annoying. He wouldn’t raise his voice with her. Instead, he lurched to the side, craning his neck and staring until the words died down on their own. 

“Why don’t we go for a drive?” he muttered, cranking on the ignition and pulling his seatbelt on. He gunned it, driving aimlessly for a good forty five minutes. The beer went from chilled to luke warm. 

He’d planned on saving it for later, anyway. 

By now, she’d gone from screaming to sobbing. No one in Vincent’s family was blind to the situation, and she knew what was coming. 

Mello figured that it must have felt worse that way. 

When they parked, about an hour and a half outside the city behind an abandoned warehouse, he pulled the blindfold off, and she stared at him. Her eyes flickered with shock, and then relief.

God damn it, that was the worst part of it. 

“You’re young,” she whispered.

“Yeah.” 

He forced himself into the back seat, and threw his legs on either side of her. 

This time, she didn’t make a noise. 

Mello’s hand snapped to her throat, and squeezed. Her pulse thudded frantic, desperate beneath his fingertips, and with the dull moonlight, he could see her mouth open, gaping, trying to breathe. 

For a few seconds, he let go, and squeezed again. 

Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Her body writhed, bucking against him in a frantic attempt at escape.

They both knew she was done for.

She must have been delirious by now. Her face wasn’t looking too good, and her breaths weren’t much better. 

“I’ll give you anything,” she gasped out, but anything wasn’t on the list tonight. He smiled at her, calm, reassuring, and brushed a few strands of hair out of her eyes. His fingers ended near the bridge of her nose.

“Keep it cool, babe,” Mello hummed, pressing his thumb to the inside of the woman’s eye socket. He pushed, and her eye bulged. She screamed, and he wasn’t surprised. 

Must’ve hurt.

He liked it.

Her body writhed underneath his, and he pushed, popping the eye out of its socket. 

She screamed. It was disgusting, somewhere between terror, an attempt at breath, and a gag. He wrinkled his nose. 

Okay, enough was enough.

The killing was automatic. One bullet, right through her skull. He didn’t even think. In the back seat of the car, he set her against leather seating covered in blood. But everything was wrapped in plastic. It’d all come out and end up in a hole a couple dozen miles south. 

Everything was already set up, as always. 

Mello rolled his tongue over his teeth, and he could practically taste blood. He eased himself back into the drivers seat, and drove for another half an hour before hitting the next stop. Getting rid of the body was easy. Checking the seats for any traces of extras, for lack of better words, took a while. The flashlight in the glove compartment fucking sucked, and everything just looked fucking _black_.

Whatever, he knew it didn’t really matter. 

Twenty minutes away, Rod would meet him at the junkyard. 

He cracked his beer open, paced around the car to make sure his work was done, and drank.

~

Matt liked working next to the windows.

God knew he’d never pull the shades up. Hopefully, Mello wouldn’t either. His face still hurt, and his nose stung every time he breathed in too harsh. 

Mello was _not_ someone to fuck with. 

Snorting was out of the question, so Matt spread the coke across his favorite glass piece and rubbed it on his gums. Numbing for his throat, energizing for his body. Half of the money left in his wallet was enough to run to the store and get the systems he needed, along with the cables. His shit at Wammy’s had to stay put, no thanks to Near. 

A cute girl by the Starbucks across the road gave him her number, and he kept it tucked in his wallet behind the fake i.d. Looked like Mello was a lot busier than Matt had expected. He should have known better—the other boy’s drive had always been incredible. He tracked around the apartment, taping wires to the ground, all leading to the coffee table. Didn’t look like Mello put anything on it, anyway.

A cigarette hung unlit between his lips, and his mind still raced with the image of the God damned beer bottle, broken and spilling onto the floor. He wasn’t sure what’d happened to the kid he’d known back at Wammy’s. The only thing he saw left was the fucking _anger_.

But when he paced around the apartment, getting ready for work and cleaning up the mess he’d made of the coffee table, he’d looked the same. Matt lit his smoke.

He didn’t give a fuck if it pissed Mello off. His now roommate was all cheap shots and harsh threats, making his way under Matt’s skin and scraping into his bones. 

Matt threw three packs beside his main laptop, and collapsed back onto the couch, only to get up a moment later to pad towards the kitchen for a glass of water.

An hour and a half later, and he was rubbing that shit on his gums again, and that’s all his day turned into. Coding, smoking, and getting himself fucked up.

That was fine. 

Not like he had anything better to do.

~

Rod gave him two bottles of whisky and three thousand dollars for the job. It wasn’t great pay, but Mello wasn’t about to complain. It’d been a quick thing, with all of the strings pulled for him. He’d go food shopping tomorrow, and buy a new coat over the weekend. The beer still sat thick in his stomach, and Rod dropped him off behind headquarters. 

“Just her?” Is all Mello asked when the car stopped moving. Rod snapped the engine off, and Mello brushed his hair out of his face. 

“For tonight.”

“All right.” Mello sighed, his eyes flickering to the rear view mirror. Taking out the Irish mob meant further control of Los Angeles. The more income, the better. For everyone involved. He took the bottles of whisky, wrapped neatly in two brown little paper bags, and pushed the door open.

“Later, Rod.”

“Take care ‘a yourself, kid.” 

The first time he paced around the apartment complex was to decompress. The second time was to take the day and wrap it up into that neat little box in the back of his head. The violence never went away, nor did the urges or the temper, but the memories, at least, kept themselves quiet.

The stairs up to the second floor creaked too loudly, and the floorboards whined beneath his feet. He’d have a few drinks, and go to bed. Rod didn’t need him until Thursday, so he’d have tomorrow to relax and Wednesday to run errands. 

God only knew the last time he went food shopping. 

He jammed the lock in the door, turned, and slipped inside. Double checking to make sure no one was following, he clicked the door shut and snapped the triple locks in place. 

The apartment had to be at least ten degrees warmer with all the fucking computers running.

“Hey.”

Right. He’d forgotten. Mello didn’t bother taking his boots off. His motorcycle jacket came sliding off his shoulder, and he hung it on the back of the door. 

Matt looked like he hadn’t budged an inch. Must’ve, because none of the shit here had been around when he left for work. 

“Hey,” Mello hummed back. He let his shoulders droop, and chewed absentmindedly on his tongue. 

“Long day?” 

“Sure.” 

_What the fuck are you on_? Mello wanted to ask, because Matt’s shaking, moving a mile a minute, and the look in his eyes isn’t telling him anything different.

“Wanna catch a movie?” 

Mello held a hand up, and Matt’s words died on his lips. Eyes crinkled shut, he rolled his neck until it cracked, and let his eyelids flutter back open, staring at the slightly younger man with a haggard expression. “I,” he began slowly, letting the words stew on the back of his tongue. Matt looked at him with hopeful eyes, fingers wrapped up in cording. 

_Wanna catch a movie?_

_Long day?_

Yeah, that was one way to put it. Mello cracked the other side of his neck, and rested his hand on the back of the couch, inches away from his now roommate’s shoulders. “am going to take a shower, have a wank, and go the fuck to bed.”

Matt tilted his head back, and gave him a crooked smile. “Another time, then.”

Heat went straight to Mello’s groin. 

“Sure.”

He took the bottles of whisky, and locked the bedroom door behind him.


	4. Reflection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Does it bother you?” he asked instead, and Mello hummed. His head is tilted back, his eyes shut. The light accentuates the circles beneath his eyes. He’s waiting for Matt to continue. “Like, that you’ve killed people?” 
> 
> “No.”

Second throwaway phone, and sixth tracking blocker he’d tried to put in place. The principle itself wasn’t hard, it was just getting the stupid thing to stay behind his damned battery. The first three times he’d fried the damned things, the next two were stupid mistakes, and then finally, he got it just right 

“Matt?” 

“That’s me.”

Near didn’t sound happy to hear him in the least. That was fine, Matt didn’t really want to talk to him, anyway. But he at least owed him a goodbye. If their conversation would even get that far. Mello didn’t need someone to keep an eye on him. Mello needed someone to just _be there_.

An observation, and perhaps, a misread one, but Matt stuck by it. 

“You haven’t found him?”

“Oh, I fucking found him.”

“What? How is he?” It’d been a year since Matt’d helped Mello pack his bags and walked him to the gate of the orphanage. A year of letters sent and never returned, guessing addresses, and following whatever lead he could. 

Wammy’s tried to leave him in the past. After the Beyond Birthday incident, they’d realized it was better that way for the runaways. 

Near just wanted him for the case. 

“Man, it’s shit.”

“I was under the presumption that this phone call would not occur.”

“Point being?”

“It’s _your_ head, Matt,” Near warned, but they both knew that Matt didn’t give a shit. He’d followed Mello blindly to Los Angeles. Hell, he’d followed Near’s orders blindly just because his childhood friend had been involved. 

Matt laughed, and lit himself a cigarette while he paced around the apartment building. First time outside in a week, and the weather was shit. He didn’t really notice, with three quarters of a bottle of wine sitting in his stomach. His legs moved slow, but it didn’t matter. Mello wasn’t back and he was in no rush either way. 

“Tried to fuckin’ slash my face open.”

“ _You_?” Even Near can’t repress his shock. “The fuck happened?”

“Just not thrilled to see me, I guess.”

“That’s extreme.”

“Cut my left nostril right open. Nasty bitch of a thing, too.”

“The murders are true?” Near asked softly. Did he really need to ask? 

“Of course.” Matt had no doubt. Maybe, Near wanted to preserve the idea that Mello wouldn’t go to such an extreme.

Everything about Mello, even in his childhood, had been extreme.

“Where are you?”  


“Can't tell you that, man. Told you I’m just keeping an eye on him.”

"And what did you think that entailed?”

“Wasn't specified.”

Matt rolled his shoulders. Okay, now Near sounded pissed. ‘Course, he had every right to be. He expected to have full surveillance on Mello, and that just wasn’t going to happen. “Matt.” 

“Yeah, Near.”

“Support from Wammy’s will be pulled if you continue your involvement.”

“It’s fine.”

“You’re not thinking.”

“I am.”

“Very well.” Near didn’t expect this, and it almost made Matt laugh, because of how similar he is to L. In that sense, he deserved to be his successor. It was always planning, predicting movements, percentages, all that shit that didn’t make a damned of a difference if the other half wasn’t going to play along.

Matt never listened much to rules and order, anyway. 

“Sorry, man. I thought…it’d be different.”

There was a pause on the end of the line. “What?”

“I think, well, he really needs my help.”

“Or are you just telling yourself that?” 

Matt laughed. “Maybe.” He sat himself down on the sidewalk, and lit another smoke. “But man, he never smiles anymore.”

“ _That_ is none of my concern.”

“But it’s _mine_.”

Near sighed. “Was this part of your plan all along?”  


“Man, we both know I don’t think that far ahead.”

At least, he was a decent liar now. 

“Matt, _I_ needed your help.”

He sighed into the plastic speaker on the cellphone. “Yeah, I know.”

The line went dead, and Matt flipped the phone shut.

~

Jose and Mello went to dinner. They went to a five star restaurant. One where they refused to let you pour your own bottle of wine, and there were three different forks for God only knows what. Mello was stuck shifting his legs under the table, resisting the urge to pop the ankle from one leg onto the knee of the other. He settled on sitting with a hand between his thighs, keeping his legs spread apart. 

Either way, he looked out of place. He kept his leather studded jacket open, showing hints of his vest and the glass rosary beads that dangled around his neck. 

He didn’t want to be here. 

These meetings were the fucking worst. And Jose didn’t look too thrilled about it, either. For the first half an hour, they waited dumbly by the front entrance of the restaurant, waiting for their new business partner to arrive. Nothing special about him—not particularly smart and not particularly good looking.

But he had the funds, and that meant Rod slipping Mello a shiny, platinum credit card and sending him to the best restaurant in the city. 

“Rod’s a fair guy, ya know?” Jose said, his mouth half full. Of course, he’d think that. “Doesn’t have time for the normal shit. And we're all doing well.”

_Got nothing to do with Rod, though_ , Mello said silently, cutting into his steak while he listened to Jose blabber on. 

Jose wasn’t a smart guy, but he was fine enough, and Mello couldn’t afford to be picky. He ate his food in slow, calculated bites, and figured he’d need to do most of the talking. Wouldn’t be here, otherwise. 

It wasn’t always killing and kidnapping and blood and fistfights. 

Sometimes, it was this sort of shit. Putting on a handsome face and sucking metaphorical dick until he got what he needed. 

In this case, it was a firearms deal. 

“You’re not from here,” Mello said halfway through the conversation, a sliver of steak stabbed through with his fork. He flicked his eyes across the man’s face, watching his lips twist into a grin. 

Mello could tell this man was trying to play him. Naturally.

He looked like a child in adult’s clothes. To them, anyway. Men that had been dealing with a family in one way or another for decades. They were families, though, that liked to fuck around. And Mello knew the numbers. Matt’d scraped up every last bit of info on this guy. His record was pristine, and his turn around wasn’t quick enough to fuck Rod over. 

“Two thousand units in Santa Monica last year?” he asked, popping the food into his mouth and letting it sit on his tongue. 

The man’s eyes widened. Branden Jones. A simple name. Very American. He had a New Yorker’s accent and the rash manners to boot. Mello appreciated it. Reminded him of Winchester. “In New York, one hundred thousand units. All underground. Half goes to Mexico in exchange for Marijuana, the other half leaks through New England and down the East Coast.”

“Two hundred thousand.”

“Don’t handle me, Branden,” Mello warned, and slipped a crumpled up piece of paper out of his pocket. It was almost laughable, until Jones looked it over, hands spreading the thing as flat as he could. 

“Where did you—“

“We want four thousand units by next month. In exchange, we’ll up from Marijuana to cocaine. All within the borders.”

Jones slid the paper back to him. “And the pricing—“

“Is fair, given prior business.” Mello held his wine glass clumsily, and Branden’s eyes snapped to it. Pompous, for a man that could hardly speak right. He was an idiot. 

All of them were. 

Just tools to get him that extra boost, that little bit of a lift that would push him from ninety nine to one hundred. That little bit that’d push him above his past failures.

God, wasn’t competition a killer. 

Mello sighed, and set the glass down. “We’re looking to make a deal, not a one way situation. We want to be happy, and we want you to be happy. _However_ , I have no time, and Rod certainly has no time to fuck around with the dick jerking attempt at bargaining prices that have, judging from past transactions, been solidified.”

“Four thousand units,” Mello said with finality, finishing off his glass.

“I want the coke in Manhattan by the first of the month.”

“We’ll have it there the night before,” Mello drawled, watching with wide eyes as the server poured him another glass.

~~

Mello spotted Matt outside of the apartment building. He had a cigarette between his fingers, smoking himself into fucking oblivion without a care in the world. 

“Nice out,” Matt commented.

“It’s frigid.”

“Nah,” he said with a grin. If only Mello could be like him, without a damned care in the world. So laid back that sometimes, he hardly seemed alive. Mello sat down next to him on the sidewalk. It was still uncomfortable, to be around him. 

Matt seemed too old.

“Get anything?”

“Jack.”

It terrified him, because Matt wasn’t the kid that’d sat in the back of his head for the past year. He had hard eyes and an even harder jaw. A smoking addiction and God only knew what else.

“Here,” Mello said, thrusting a bag of leftovers across the pavement until it knocked against Matt’s boot. Matt stared at it blankly, to the point where Mello wondered if there was even a thought going through his head at all. 

“Oh.” 

“Did you eat dinner yet?”

“Nah, I forgot.”   
Typical.

“Jose and I went out. Nice place, you’d like it.”

“Oh, cool. Thanks, man.” It was heavy, when Matt picked it up. Still had to have half a meal in it. 

They both know Matt isn’t up for leaving long enough to go to a restaurant.

“Yeah,” Mello hummed, and Matt snubbed out the rest of his smoke. 

~~  


Matt’s eyes cracked open at four in the morning, a meager forty five minutes after he’d managed to force himself to rest. Hell, he’d even forgotten to dull the monitors. Still, this shit was getting old.

There was that normal scream, the stumbling of footsteps around Mello’s bedroom, swearing, and then finally, the thump of Mello falling back into his mattress. The first day, they’d established that Matt was to go nowhere near his sleeping quarters. 

So be it. 

Matt didn’t really want to deal with that shit show anyway. Hadn’t happened when he was a kid, so it had to’ve been something new.

Sounded like it was shit, though. 

He cracked his neck, and sat himself up. Forgot to brush his teeth, maybe. Matt padded across the small apartment, into the bathroom and fumbling around to find the light switch. In most of the apartment, the lights were dull, low watt things that made you have to squint to really see what you were doing once it was night time. In the bathroom, though, it was all fluorescent bullshit, burning Matt’s eyes for the first few seconds that everything flicked on. 

He rammed his toothbrush against his teeth, the poor thing already worn down and messy compared to Mello’s.    
Whatever, didn’t matter. Cleaned his teeth, and that was all he needed to worry about. 

“Mel?” he called when he was back on the couch. He didn’t expect his roommate to answer. So, when the door came creaking open, and Mello slipped out, wearing a thin pair of pajama pants, he frowned.

That bad, then?

“Something on the monitors?” he mumbled groggily, his eyes set on the ground, a hand rubbing at his face. He looked exhausted, and his voice cracked when he talked. Dragging himself, from what it seemed.

Figured, he’d think that’s what Matt was calling him for. 

“No, uh, nothing interesting.”  


“What, then?” 

Oh, shit. “Uh, I just…couldn’t sleep.”

Mello shot him a look, but he just leans against the doorframe instead of going back into his room. “And?” he asked, largely unimpressed, but his eyes seemed to soften. 

They both understood what was going on right now.

“I heard you walkin’ around. Wanted to know if you wanted to sit out with me.”

“Why?” 

Matt frowned. Oh. “Well, haven’t done something like that in a while.” _In over a year_ , he added silently, and Mello just eyed him with a look that was more exhausted than anything else.

“Yeah, sure.”

The night sky was clouded, smoggy from city pollution. Mello sat with his legs spread, leaning against the rusted bars surrounding the edge of the fire escape. Matt sprawled himself out on the ground, watching like a hawk. Goggles fastened over his face, it made it easier. 

Observation had always been his strong suit, anyway. 

“Wanna smoke?” 

“No,” Mello said, but he held his hand out for a cigarette regardless. Matt lit it between his lips, and passed it over.

“Rough night.”

“Any movement?”

“Petty drug deals.”

“Interesting?”

“Hardly, just Mary Jane,” he murmured. “His daughter’s off the map, though.”

“Yeah.”

Matt blew out smoke from his nose. “You know what happened?” 

“She’s fifty miles outside the city.”

Matt cocked his head to get a better look at his roommate. The look in his eyes was neutral. “Where?” 

“Back of a Chevy. Junk yard.”

“Dead?”

“Sure.”

“Who did it?” 

Mello snorted, and took a slow drag. The smoke curled out of its mouth on his own, and he sat, jaw slacked, hunched over just enough to push his hair into his face. 

Matt thought he looked gorgeous.

That was an awful thing to think, because Mello had a sticky habit of destroying everything that got near him. 

“Guess,” he murmured. The lamination from the apartment bounced off the right side of Mello’s face, and he looked grotesque, half consumed by a dull fire, his eyes sunken and lips twisted to a snarl. 

Matt inhaled hard. “Yeah, figured.”

“Should sleep soon.” 

“Yeah.”

Neither of them budged. Mello’s eyes bore into him, staring him down and consuming him. He was beautiful, despite his twisted face and his morbid eyes. Matt let his own droop shut, and absorbed the idea that he could _want_ Mello.

That he could imagine pressing his body to Mello’s, letting that awful, disturbed face take absolutely all of him. 

A problem for another day. 

Matt dragged out the rest of his smoke, and flicked it off the fire escape. The sun started to peek out from behind sky scrapers, and Matt figured that okay, maybe he should really try to go to bed. 

“Does it bother you?” he asked instead, and Mello hummed. His head is tilted back, his eyes shut. The light accentuates the circles beneath his eyes. He’s waiting for Matt to continue. “Like, that you’ve killed people?” 

“No.” It was quick, blunt.  


“Why?” 

“Do you believe I’m wrong?” 

“I never said that.”

“Then what does it matter?”    
_Because you have a shitty habit of making me worry._ Not that he should fucking care. Mello didn’t give a fuck about slicing part of his face open, or the bruises that decorated his gut. Then again, Matt didn’t give a shit that he beat the shit out of the older boy just over a week ago. Nothing resolved, didn’t matter. “Just curious.”

“Don’t be.”

_But you can’t sleep at night_.

Mello handed half a cigarette back to Matt. “Finish it.”

“Okay.” He didn’t need another smoke, but he wasn’t one to let it go to waste. He plucked it from between Mello’s fingers, his nicotine stained hand brushing over the tips of Mello’s nails. 

He saw, for the first time, that they were painted a stark black. At work, he must have always kept his gloves on. “Matt,” he murmured, and said boy rolled his head back to look at Mello. “Never kill someone.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. He ripped through the cigarette, and ran a hand through his hair.“Too late on that one, man.” 

Matt hated the way Mello’s eyes widened and locked on him. “When?” 

He shrugged. “Not a big deal.” That’s all it ever was with Matt. Not a big fucking deal. Don’t worry about it, just let it roll off your shoulders.

By now, the guilt had come and gone. 

Mello looked at him like a different person. He’d put the final nail in the coffin of Mail Jeevas. That boy from Wammy’s was long gone, just as Mihael Keehl had been the moment he’d stepped out of those gates. 

Regret could be saved for the afterlife.


	5. Blindspot, Remember?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "That was an unmarked car, he could tell that as soon as he got his eyes on it. Oh, fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He writhed, twisting his body until he heard one of his limbs pop, and then he kept going. Any pressure he could get on his legs, he used to push back.
> 
> And that was when the baton connected with his gut."

“What the _fuck_ do you _mean_ New York!?” 

This was fucking shit runner work. Fucking waste of time bullshit jobs that Mello didn’t have the patience for. The issue was that Rod didn’t have time either, the others were incompetent, and to boot, they found three of their usual guys dead in their fucking car halfway through Chicago. 

“I expect the delivery to arrive on time.” Well, no shit. No fucking shit it was supposed to arrive on time. Mello rubbed at the bridge of his nose. 

He made a mental note to find out whoever did those three in, and send them a message himself. 

“Rod, that’s two fucking weeks away. Didn’t you want—“

“ _This_ is my top priority.”

“Rod, it’s fucking—“

“Take it easy, kid. Three days there, three days back.” Yeah, easy for him to say when he’d be sitting right here on his ass. 

Mello didn’t have a choice. That much, already, was apparent.

Fuck, he couldn’t even take a fucking plane. It’d be him and whichever poor son of a bitch he dragged along with him. “You expect me to drive a fucking van all the way back to LA that’s going to have traces of fucking _coke_ all over it?!” Mello practically screamed. He was on his feet, pacing around the couch, his hands crammed in his pockets like when he was a child.

“We’ll ditch the van, I’ll get my ass to JFK, and I’ll catch a plane back.”

Fuck bringing someone else, he’d go on his own. The quicker he got this done, the better.

Mello was so fucking pissed that he was seeing red. 

“You think that’s the best plan?”

Who the fuck cared? The best plan would be to send someone else.

The final word always went to Mello, in some way, shape or form. He didn’t have an option, but he could at least decide the means. “Yeah. Let Jones deal with that shit. He’ll need a way to get it around, anyway. Can just send it to a junk yard after if he wants.”

He’d definitely rather be alone.

“I want the van packed and ready when I arrive,” Mello snapped, already on his feet and pulling his coat back on. “I’m not touching it, I’m not packing it, I’m not doing anything except driving the fucking van and delivering it.” 

And he knew he could push, because Rod owed him for securing the deal in the first place. 

“Snyder’s going to take care of it, man,” Rod agreed, because the family was intimidating, but Mello was something else entirely. 

He hated butting heads with Rod, but he should have been done with this shit after everything he’d helped Rod do.

Hell, he’d fucking _made_ Rod. Not that the mob boss would ever know that. 

And these people never planned a goddamned _thing_ on their own.

Idiots.

“Good. And when I get back, there better be a new fucking runner lined up.”

“Chill, kid, have yourself a drink when you get home.”

A whole lot easier said than done. 

~

Mello rolled over in his twin sized bed, crawling out to step over crumpled pieces of paper and books strewn about carelessly near the mattress. It sat without a frame, making it easy to place his work on the ground beside him. 

He left a note on the table, and fifty dollars for groceries. Sure, Matt had his own money, but it was compensation for the loneliness. Matt never went outside, but it was painfully obvious that he was thrilled at the idea of being around Mello after a year of absence. 

Matt was sound asleep, half slouched into the couch when Mello pulled his steel toed boots on by the door. He clunked across the wooden flooring, knowing his roommate wouldn’t budge an inch. Half of Matt’s face was buried in the sofa cushion, the other half slack and peaceful. 

Hadn’t even remembered to take his goggles off. 

Mello cracked his neck, and leaned forward. 

Matt reeked of cigarettes, but he was stunning. It was stupid, for Mello to have such an infatuation with a boy that seemed to be withering away right before his eyes. Striped shirt crumpled up in a heap on the ground, he could catch the line of Matt’s ribs, and the curve of his hipbones. 

Mello wanted to touch. A shit idea, even for him. Matt stirred, and settled back into the couch. 

Four to six days, depending on whether or not he could catch a flight back. He’d already stuffed a surveillance camera into his pocket to hook up to the van. Just in case.

Matt’s eye blinked open, and blearily, he looked up at his roommate. 

Oh. 

Mello stepped back, acting like nothing was out of the ordinary. “Mel?” 

“Mhm?” he grunted, ignoring the nickname. 

“Leaving?” 

“Yeah. Left instructions on the table.”

“Cool,” Matt mumbled, his eye drooping back shut, that stupid fucking smile crossing his face. Mello wanted to punch him. No reason other than jealousy. He leaned forward to squeeze Matt’s shoulder. Underneath Mello’s fingertips, he was warm. The heavy blanket of sleep still weighing down on him, Matt, once again, left his goggles on. 

“Stay safe,” Mello murmured, and dragged a hand up to ease the stupid things off of his face. 

Bruised eyes, tired eyes, disturbed eyes.

Fucking _junkie_ eyes.

Matt was already back asleep. Mello sighed, and grabbed his motorcycle helmet. The trip to headquarters could be done in under twenty minutes without traffic. And from there, all interstates, roadwork, and sixty mile intervals without any rest stops.

I-40 to I-80 to I-70. Easy enough. He took the van on his own, a few changes of clothes stuffed into a backpack and thrown on the passenger side’s floor.

He wasn’t about to chance a motel. Dry shampoo, a toothbrush, deodorant, and a bar of soap in case he found a place somewhere he could shower. Unlikely, but he hoped for the best. Rod told him to take someone with him.

He didn’t give a fuck what Rod had to say. No way in hell was he spending three days cramped up in this fucking van with one of those men. Mello’d rather take his chances. 

And Matt sat at home, watching the fucking computer monitor, eyes glued to the screen that had a picture of the van set up. A precaution for the both of them. Well, for Matt. If Mello ate it, there wouldn’t be a damned thing he could do. 

Mello actually thought it was worse this way. 

He floored it down the interstate, and blasted the radio. At least, Matt’s surveillance didn’t have audio. Probably could have figured it out, if he felt like it. 

At the rest stop, he took a piss and ordered himself a chocolate milkshake at the seedy DQ crammed into the corner of the rest stop. It was cold, enough to make the base of his head sting when he drank it a little too fast.

One and a half days in, he decided he could have used some company. 

Not company from any of the other men, but company. 

Matt would have been useless to drag along. 

One and a half days, he’d drop off the van, get himself to JFK Airport, and take a flight home. Three days there, six hours back once he got on the plane. Didn’t give a fuck what Rod said, he had enough cash in his bank account for the flight five times over, and he’d be damned if Branden’s guys were going to let him take the van back with him. Better to leave it and destroy the evidence as they went. 

~~  


In Pennsylvania, Mello stopped at a bar. A shitty, grimy looking place that didn’t have much life to it. Didn’t matter. He ordered himself a Black Russian, and sipped at it in the corner of the room. Out of sight, out of mind. That was the plan, and he was sticking to it. He rolled his shoulders, and finished the drink in four large sips.

At least, the buzz would hit quicker.

A boy stood next to him, jet black hair and an arm covered in tattoos. 

That’s fine. He didn’t look up and didn’t make eye contact.

“Here by yourself?”    
“What, you give fuckin’ handjobs?” Mello snapped, rude, harsh. Usually, that would do the trick.

The boy just stared at him, a smile quirked onto his lips. _Oh_. 

“For a price, sure.”

Mello didn’t know if he was interested, but it was better than a woman, and his body was lean, thin, with vascular forearms and spindly fingers. 

He was drinking a screwdriver. Had to be young. Maybe Mello’s age. Probably older.

No, definitely older.

Mello led him to the bathroom, all but shoving him into one of the stalls. 

Nasty. 

At least, he was good looking.

Mello spread his legs, and let the man slip between them. He leaned for a kiss, and Mello shirked away, wrinkling his nose and pursing his lips shut. 

“Don’t.”

The retraction was quick, frantic, so apologetic that Mello actually found it pathetic. He eased the boy’s hand against his cock, rolling his hips up to meet the grasp. Maybe it’d be great, maybe this kid would fucking suck, but at least it was _something_. When he tugged at the laces, it took him three tries to get them undone. Mello didn’t make a noise. No hint at pleasure, no hint at distaste. For some reason, the other boy looked young. So much younger that it frightened Mello, to think of himself. In the mirror, he had dead, nasty eyes and an even nastier scowl.

Stress made that certain.

Mello watched him, steely eyed while he fished his cock out of his pants, working at him in slow, calculated strokes. When the other boy glanced at his face to catch some sort of a hint, he got nothing. 

_Not your first time here, but you’re nervous_.

“Don’t fuck up my pants,” was all Mello said, tilting his head back and thrusting up against the hooker’s grip. He was only decent, but the sensation of heat between his legs, of desire from someone that he could actually see himself fucking, was overwhelming. He wouldn’t, but the temptation, at least, was there.

_Fucking faggot_. 

The words sat thick in the back of his throat, a bitter, sour thing of that hit him in the middle of his chest. He glanced down at his rosary, and then back at the ceiling. Hands still at his side, Mello didn’t move an inch. He watched, the fist around his cock tight and hot, delicious friction that made his breaths sharp and quick.

“Your name?” the boy murmured. 

Fear ripped down Mello’s spine fast, pooling harsh in his gut and turning him off before his mind was even completely aware. _No_.

“Hands _off_.”

Paranoia banged around in his head, coiling that desire to strike, to fucking pin this kid down and ask him what the fuck his problem was. 

And _God_ , he’d actually wanted to finish.

“What?”   
Not fast enough. Mello ripped the boy away from him, shoving him so hard that he stumbled over his own feet and nearly went crashing to the ground. Even the thought made him sick. He pulled himself back together, yanking the lacing of his pants so hard that he was damned sure that the eyelets were going to rip out of their place in the leather. 

He ripped the cash out of his pocket, all but slapping it into the kid’s hands. “Get the fuck out of here.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t—“

“ _Out_.”

He scrambled out of the bathroom and in turn, out of the bar. In the stall, Mello stood with the back of his head pressed to the stall door, eyes wrenched shut and heart pounding in his chest. It wasn’t even a close call. It wasn’t even a _close fucking call_ , and he was in a full blown panic.

_Breathe_.

He inhaled sharp through his noise, and cracked his neck. 

Fuck this. Forget sleeping, he was just going to get his ass to Manhattan, and then to the airport. He washed his hands, splashed water on his face, and took another deep breath. 

_Get yourself the fuck together_. He stared hard at the mirror. _Quit acting like a goddamned bitch_.

Four hours, and he was pulling behind a shit lamp shop that he was one hundred percent sure didn’t make the majority of its income by selling motherfucking lamps.  


“It’s all there?” Branden asked, his thick New York accent grating on Mello’s ears.

_Here just to make sure it got in right?_ Seemed like a waste of time, but Mello wasn’t going to open his mouth and tell him that. 

“Yeah. Had the guys count it out.”

“Positive?”   
“Do I look like the kind of guy to fuck around?” Mello snapped, and that was that. 

The shipment would be on its way in two days. Enough time for Mello to get back and start preparing its pickup. Not really complicated, but nothing to fuck around with, either. Each step had to be carefully planned out and covered immediately. Shit Mello could do in his sleep.

It was getting everyone else to fucking _cooperate_ that was always the issue. 

He wandered to a twenty four hour gas station, the LED “Open” sign glaring at him from the window. Shitty looking place. The wet floor sign was propped up near the door, though the floor still looked as grimy as it probably had all day. 

Mello couldn’t wait to get to the fucking airport. 

The door bell chimed behind him, and he ignored it, scuffing his way through the aisles, the heels of his boots thunking against the ground while he walked.

Rod told him to just get a ticket when he got there. A couple hundred dollars in his pocket, and that ten times over in his bank account made sure that it wouldn’t be an issue.

~~

Bored out of his fucking mind.

All self induced, but he was too young and too stupid to really realize that. He could go out, but he kept his eyes glued to the screen until the camera in Mello’s van snapped itself off.

Either Mello was dead, or he turned the damned thing off.

Probably, the latter.

After all, he hadn’t really wanted to bring the damned thing in the first place. It’d been a brief discussion that ended with harsh, one word responses, and that obvious look of disgust etched into Mello’s face. 

Tourniquet secured around his upper arm, Matt melted himself a whole mess of heroin, and shot up with the needle pressed into the crook of his arm. This vein, at least, hadn’t collapsed yet. His left arm, on the other hand, was a whole different story.

Without Mello around, at least, he was free to walk around with his sleeves rolled up and his messy excuse of forearms showing. Not a conversation he was about to have with his childhood friend. The track marks were one thing, the self harm was a different issue entirely. 

Cocaine picked him up, heroin just made him feel _alive_. 

But he had a bad habit of doing _more_. More, more, more, more, until his body decided on his own that enough was enough. 

Matt blacked out fishing for something off of the ground, slipping off of the couch and cracking his head so hard against the coffee table that he woke himself back up. 

Jolting back up, he gasped, grasping at his forehead. Pain flowered through his skull, stinging behind his eyes. His chest clenched in shock, still so fucking high that he still didn’t feel the full extent of the impact. 

“Oh, _fuck_.”

Too much, then. 

He shuffled to the sink to get himself a glass of water. 

~~  


“Hands behind your head.” 

The words caught Mello off guard, standing in the candy aisle the same depressing gas station. A bar of chocolate sat in one hand, and a thing of milk in the other. 

Oh, fuck. 

A cop?

Mello went to turn his head, and there was a hand grasping at his hair, ripping him back so quickly that the milk fell to the ground with a dull thud, chocolate following soon after.

Oh, fuck, it was a fucking cop. He caught a glimpse of the shiny, silver badge on his shirt, and the baton at his waist.

He had to make a run for it.

Not the first time and not the last, but this was by far the closest call he’d ever had in this sort of situation. 

And he couldn’t get the hand out of his fucking _hair_.

Mello’s Beretta was in his left coat pocket. He grasped for it, but it was too obvious. He damned well knew that even before his hands were locked behind his back. Fuck. Fuck that. And the _dragged_ him like he was a fucking rag doll, banging him carelessly against the doorframe of the entrance. Christ. 

And the owner didn’t do a damned thing.

Then again, Mello realized that he probably looked like a fucking convict, screaming and swearing and kicking while he was led out of the building.

And God _damn it_ , he was so fucking close to the airport. 

They cracked Mello’s head against the windshield, and the door opened.

Wait.

In an instant, Mello was spreading his legs to hook on either side of the door. 

_Definitely not a cop_.

That was an unmarked car, he could tell that as soon as he got his eyes on it. Oh, fuck. Fuck. _Fuck_. He writhed, twisting his body until he heard one of his limbs pop, and then he kept going. Any pressure he could get on his legs, he used to push back. 

And that was when the baton connected with his gut.

It knocked the air out of him so fast that his body curled in on itself, legs dropping to the ground and fucking tearing his defense right down.

Not a cop car.

Definitely fucked.

And they didn’t even _knock him out_. Just blindfolded him, tied his hands, and threw him into the back of a car.

At least he put up one hell of a fight. Swinging and screaming and thrashing at every chance he could get, he made sure that he at least landed a few good hits before he went down.

His phone had been dead for two hours, and the security camera shat out before he’d even gotten through Pennsylvania.

Couldn’t even break his thumb to get out of this one. 

At first, he screamed. He screamed and swore and threw around so many different curses that would’ve made even the most vile of criminals fear for their well being.

When it came down to it, he was completely vulnerable. 

But who the fuck would come looking for him here?  


Again, he screamed. 

~~

Fine, fuck Mello, if he wasn’t going to call. Matt paced around the apartment aimlessly for the next two days, and in the back of his head, he _knew_ he probably should have been concerned. But Mello never told him what the fuck to do if someone dismantled one of the cameras. A cross country trip wasn’t worth it—especially if it had been done intentionally. Similar to the Exchange LA incident, Mello would have been less than thrilled to see him.

_Don’t come looking for me. This is to ease your own mind_.

For another day, he sat his ass down on the couch and ripped through two packs of cigarettes, sleeping being the only time he didn’t have something wedged between his fingers, burning away at his lungs. Everything taste!d like ash. The back of his tongue burned, and his throat scratched when he swallowed. 

_I’ll get back when I get back._

He decided, after day five, that he actually needed to get out and do something. That, really, was saying something. Matt picked out that tattered piece of paper from behind his fake I.D., and called the number on his throwaway phone.

“Hey, uh, this is Matt.”

“Excuse me?”

“We met outside Starbucks a few weeks ago.” 

“Oh, _Matt. Right,_ I’m sorry, I thought you’d call sooner.”

Oh, shit. “Uh, yeah, uh. Was out of town for business and stuff.” _And stuff_. Real fuckin’ smooth. She didn’t seem to care. She laughed it off, and her voice sounded nice. “I just, uh, well, I’m not doing anything today, thought you’d wanna go out or something.”

“What’re you thinking?” 

“Nothing fancy. Just pizza or like, we could catch a movie.”

“Pizza’s great. We’ll meet at Venice Beach?” 

“Sure, totally.” 

Matt rolled himself a joint, and smoked it on the fire escape. Didn’t matter, Mello wasn’t going to notice. 

Matt wasn’t sure what to expect. But Mello wasn’t around and he didn’t have anything better to do. He took the bus over, headphones jammed in his ears and one leg crossed over the other. She was beautiful. Boring, but beautiful.

And apparently, not really interested in the pizza at all. 

When he had her dress around her ankles in the back seat of his car, she asked what he wanted, and he said that really, anything she wanted to do sounded pretty nice. 

Women were soft, warm in his grasp and even warmer to be inside of. She straddled him, hands wrapped around his torso while he fucked her. She liked to kiss, and Matt was fine with that. 

Her lips were smooth and covered in gloss, and her neck smelled like cotton candy perfume. 

Whatever, if Mello didn’t want him to help.

He’d figure his way back home on his own. 

And if he really needed, he’d call.

Matt hated the feeling of condoms, but she managed to put it on him with her mouth, and he’d be lying if he didn’t think that was really fucking hot. 

He came with his lips against her neck, shuddering at the whine that erupted from between her lips.

They won’t do this again.

That was fine. Matt was busy and he got bored too damned fast. 

When he dropped her off, he gave her a kiss, and she ran a hand down his arm, fingers lacing with his leather clad ones. 

And, well, that’s that. 

Back in Mello's apartment, he popped a few doses of Xanax, and settled himself on the couch with his PSP. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Setting up for a more pivotal part of the story. After this, Matt and Mel's interactions will be much more directly related.


	6. Euthanasia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He could hear Matt rustling through the cupboards in the kitchen, followed by the smell of coffee. In a pure white cup, Matt slipped him a cup of coffee full of cream and sugar.
> 
> Mello wanted to throw up."

“He’s _still_ going?!” 

Mello couldn’t see. But he could hear footsteps around him, hands grasping at him, handling him, throwing him around and trying to secure him down.

He still put up one hell of a fight. Mello screamed at the top of his lungs, swearing, threatening, kicking his legs and tugging at the restraints around his wrists so hard that he could feel the wet trickle of blood springing against his skin. Rope dug into broken flesh, and it stung. God, _fuck_ , it stung. 

“Someone take fucking care of this!”

_Need to get out. Need to get out of here_.

“Where the _fuck’s_ the dope?” 

_No no no no no no no_

No fucking way. No fucking _way_ were they drugging him up with anything. 

Mello’s foot connected with _something_ , and there was a gasp. “ _Don’t touch me! Don’t fucking touch me!_ ” he all but screeched, and he didn’t care if there wasn’t a bit of fucking dignity to this. He couldn’t see, couldn’t move, didn’t know how the fuck he was going to get out of this, but he had it set in his mind that he was _not_ going to get stuck like this. 

Like hell was he going to go down without a fight. 

The hand tugging his head back had something else in mind. Still, he kicked and bared his teeth, biting and screeching like a rabid animal. 

Mind over matter didn’t apply here.

He had to have looked fucking insane. And he was fucked. He was so fucking _fucked._

“Fuck _off_ , fucking _cocksucker!_ Fucking—“ his words turned into muffled screams when a cloth came over his nose, and mouth, choking him. 

Oh, God _damn it_. 

He was so angry that his head was throbbing. 

Chloroform. Oldest fucking trick in the book. But it’d be fine. It’d be fine, he’d wake up, he’d wake up and—

A needle pressed against the inside of his arm. 

Right into his vein. Mello tried to pull away, but his head was already swimming. 

~~

It was all white. 

Mello would have had to have been a real fucking idiot not to know what was about to happen. 

At least, he told himself, he _knew_. He’d read about White Torture, and he’d implemented some of the same tactics himself on other victims. He could keep the thought in his head that it’d be fine. 

Yeah. 

Nothing about this was fine.

What really got him thinking was _how_ and _where_. Had to have been beneath the city. No, too easy. Someplace simple. A house in the suburbs? Abandoned corporate office? His mind raced for any sort of answer, and he realized, quickly, that it didn’t matter, because there was no way out. 

The high was still running through his veins when he woke up.

It was too strong. 

And there were hands on him again. White gloves, white clothes, white masks and white bindings.

He knew, with the needle sinking into his vein, that it could’ve been enough to kill him. God, he wasn’t even _sober_ yet _._ It stung, jammed in the wrong way and done with little care. He tried to scream. A gag forced itself past his lips. A white rag knotted a few times behind his head. 

Jesus. 

His mind raced, body bound to a chair while he squirmed to get out. Oh, he was dead.

He was fucking dead. 

They didn’t even beat the shit out of him. Didn’t try to _talk_ to him.

Must’ve known they wouldn’t have gotten anywhere with him yet.

He _loathed_ it. 

~~

A woman yanked the gag from his mouth.  


“Let’s talk about Rod Ross.”

“Fuck yourself, fucking _dyke_ ,” Mello spat at the woman in front of him. She wasn’t tough looking, but she looked trashy as all hell. Insults wouldn’t work, but he hoped it would be somewhat of a knife to the chest.

A hand connected with his face. He was so fucking high he couldn’t even feel it. 

“Go ahead, shoot me,” Mello taunted, his mouth twisting into a disgusting snarl.“Fucking _shoot me_!”

“We both know you’re too valuable for that,” she hummed, and grasped at his face with two manicured fingers. Painted nails dug into his skin, and he winced. So fucking high he couldn’t see straight. He felt disgusting. Sick, spinning, crumbling, dying. 

He was alone.

Fucked up, alone, and left to die. 

_Fuck_.

“You’re disgusting.” 

“How was that handjob?” she taunted, her eyes dark, looking right through him.

The look of surprise was too sudden. He couldn’t mask it, and then, it all fucking clicked.

He’d let his guard down. 

“He’s one of yours.”

“Who the fuck else’s gonna give a kid a hand job in a shitty bar like that?” She laughed. “Didn’t know Rod’d hire a little fag boy.”

_Fag. Fag fag fag faggot fag_.

It was just going to be this.

For the rest of his life, it was just going to be this.

The realization was chilling, and it threw Mello into a hysteria he didn’t think possible.

He sobbed. Sobbed and screamed and bawled his eyes out until his throat hurt and he thought that the crying was going to be what finally did him in. 

He threw such a fit that his stomach churned and he felt nauseous, head spinning from the lack of oxygen.

She pushed the chair over and kicked him until he puked.

~~

Branden was closer to the Irish mob than expected. 

And apparently, Mello’s actions weren’t part of the arrangement. How the fuck would he know that? How the fuck would he God damned _know?_ He knew it didn’t make a difference one way or the other.

These guys didn’t give a fuck what Mello did or didn’t do intentionally. 

The point was, they were supposed to send a message, and that was that.

Apparently, the daughter he'd killed was worth a lot. 

Apparently, this was hurting their business. 

They didn’t want to kill him, they just wanted to send a message. 

And Mello would give them credit—they were doing a damned good fucking job.

~~

He got so high that he puked, and his heart felt like it would burst. 

Dying.

Mello had to have been dying. 

He groaned, and his body wouldn’t move. 

He needed to fucking move.

The panic set in, and against his gag, he screamed.   
~~

He was completely naked.

This woman looked at him, her eyes baring into him, taking in every inch of his form. 

Mello wanted the blindfold back. 

She scoffed.

He wished she’d just shoot him.

And completely naked, bound to this chair with his legs spread, Mello sat completely silent. 

He wouldn’t say a word. 

“Well? Where is she?” 

“ _Cunt_.”

Wrong word. 

He wanted her to fucking _kill him_.

_If you can’t kill them, go for their mind._

_Don’t like someone? Don’t take their life away, just ruin it._

Mello was fucking sick. 

Mello was high as all hell. Everything moved around him, though he was sitting still. Her face was contorted, and her body swayed as she approached him.

_Soft._

_Women are soft and fucking disgusting._

_Don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me_

A hand scraped up his chest.

Nails dug into his shoulder and pierced hard enough to draw blood.

Anyone could take one look at Mello and know he was a vain son of a bitch. And while she looked at him, her eyes taking in _everything_ , he wanted to curl up on himself and _end it_.

She was fucking dead as soon as he got out of here.

_If_ he got out of here. 

~~

Alone. Alone alone alone alone alone alone alone alone alone

His chest was tight and his mind was gone. 

On the floor, his stomach stung and his head spun. 

How much shit was in his system?

_Let me out let me out i want to die kill me kill me kill me_

_No one can survive this_

_stop_

_stop_

_i’ll kill myself i’ll kill myself i’ll kill myself_

His wrists bled and he kept hitting his head against the floor, trying to feel something, _anything_.

Couldn’t hear a sound. 

His head collided with the floor, but everything tingled, and he could barely feel it. 

Mello heard himself groan.

The full extent of his high hit him, and he blacked out.

~  


It was a woman. He could tell by the feel of her hands against him, yanking his head back and pushing something into his nose.

He tried to pull away. Already knew it wasn’t going to work. 

_Soft._

_Women are soft._

_Get the fuck away from me get the fuck off of me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me_

He can’t breathe. 

“Who the fuck is Matt?” she asked him. 

Mello spat in her face, but his stomach dropped.

He didn’t know what he said. Had to have been something, because there was no other way she’d know about him. He was a nobody. Third place. Always in the background, always behind the scenes.

He hoped Matt wasn’t involved. God _damn it_ , he prayed that Matt wasn’t involved. 

~~

They left him alone for a day and a half.

When he accidentally pissed himself, they beat the living hell out of him. 

Mortified.

He wanted to be shot.

He wanted to overdose.

But they kept him right on the edge of life and death. Sanity was long gone, but his body would still function.

“Now, now,” she hushed him, slamming her hand over his mouth.

_Can’t breathe_.

He had to inhale through his nose. He panicked, because he knew this was going to be bad. He knew what human beings were capable of, because he’d done the same damned thing time after time again. 

His body writhed, and his face had to have been red from the lack of oxygen. But she held him in place, his upper half unable to move, unable to get that _shit_ out of his nose. 

Mello inhaled, and it all went right up. He sputtered a desperate cough against the gag, and felt the relief of oxygen rushing down his throat. At least, he could breathe. At least, he was still alive.

He had no idea what she’d put inside of him. 

When the trip hit him, it was disorienting. 

All of his days were the same.   
Groggy sobriety torn away by drug after drug, ripping him up and down and into highs he’d known and highs that were completely foreign. 

More than anything, he felt alone. A sense of nothingness. 

But never, _never_ did he spill the information they’d wanted from him. Not when he was sobbing, not when he was so high he couldn’t remember where he was, not even when they choked the life out of him and threw him around while he was bound to that goddamned awful chair for hours on end. 

Because if he could live, and if he could get out of this, then he could win. 

Matt wouldn’t come for him.

It was better that way.

He wouldn’t know how to handle this.

He’d break any bone necessary, to get himself out of here. He’d _die_ , if it meant he could get out.

They’d completely immobilized him. 

“We’ll kill him?” 

_Please._

“That’s useless.” 

_I don’t care how you do it just end this._

“Yeah?” 

“Send him back.”

_Just kill me_.

“You think it’ll get those Irish fuckers back on top?”

_I’ll do anything just kill me._

“Sure.”

_Kill me kill me kill me kill me_.

“Just throw him in the river.”

_Drowning is fine._

_“_ He might not make it.’

_That’s okay_.

“We’ll see.”

~~

He woke rolled up in a rug and underwater. 

Mello’s body shook from the lack of a high, shook as it tried to recover, and he flailed. The water seeped into the fibers of the thing around him, weighing it down, giving it so much more force against him. 

_God damn it_.

It was sloppy. 

His body told him not to die

He kicked and flailed until his limbs were loose enough to slip out, and when he hit the surface, he was choking and sputtering, inhaling shaky breaths that his body didn’t even register.

Yeah, this wasn’t good.

Wasn’t sure if he could actually get out of this place, but he was going to have to give it a shot. 

~~  


Mello had to’ve been dead. Or he bailed. 

But it was creeping up on almost a month, and that was, by no means, normal. Mello should have called him by now. Should have at least had the decency to tell him that he wasn’t going to come back. 

That way, Matt could get on with himself and get the fuck out of Los Angeles.

The air here fucking sucked. 

He smoked in the apartment, and the ceiling above where he sat was beginning to turn a murky yellow. 

Maybe Mello would be pissed.

Whatever. 

Mello probably wouldn’t be coming back. 

He should have called Near.

Matt didn't care enough. And though he didn't have all that much pride, there’s no fucking way he was about to call Near and tell him that this whole situation’s fucked itself over. 

Instead, he smoked. Smoked and waited and played shitty video games until his mind was next to dead. 

Two days later, he jolted awake to keys ramming themselves into the lock. Had to’ve been Mello. He eased himself through the doorway, leaning heavy on the wall while he yanked his shoes off. 

Same clothes he left in. 

His hair, at least, looked wet.

Had he just come from a motel?

This was easily the worst shape Matt’d ever seen him in. His body shook while he walked, and his jaw quivered whenever his mouth shut. And his _eyes_ didn’t look quite right. Matt knew that look, because he saw it in himself. 

And to see _Mello_ of all people reflecting him. 

That was shit. 

He stood, forgetting his anger, forgetting the thoughts that Mello had abandoned him, that he was a fucking prick, that he did this shit just to make a fucking _point_. That all went out the window. He rushed over, and he saw Mello pedal back, his entire form tensing up.

“What the fuck _happened_ , man?” he asked, and Mello just _stared_.

It was horrific.

Wide eyed, pale blue eyes, ice cold, dead, gone, nothing inside of his head.

He looked fucked up. 

Around his neck, bruises flowered across most of his skin. 

“Sit down.”

Staring. 

Hesitant, even more cautious than normal, Matt reached out for him. 

Mello allowed it. 

He could hear Matt rustling through the cupboards in the kitchen, followed by the smell of coffee. In a pure white cup, Matt slipped him a cup of coffee full of cream and sugar.

Mello wanted to throw up.

“I need a different cup.”

“What?”

“I need a _different fucking cup_!” 

Matt must have thought he was fucking crazy, for blowing up over it. But he bit his tongue, and scrambled to the kitchen to pour the coffee into something else. A pitch black mug with a large chip on the rim. Mello didn’t give a fuck. 

He stared at it, when Matt put it on the table. 

“Dude, are you okay?” 

“Grand.”

“You were gone for a month.”

“Yeah.” 

“Was it Rod?” 

“Sure.”

No way in fucking hell he was going to talk to Matt about this. He sat right next to Mello, and the heat radiated off of his body. Unsurprising. The walk home had been boiling, but he still wore that stupid long sleeved striped shirt and his gloves. 

He had to have been sweating like all hell. 

The coffee was strong, way too sweet on the back of his throat, but it was better than white rice and fucking water. 

“What have you been doing?” Mello asked.

Matt just shrugged. His hands knotted together while he sat, and he watched Mello like a hawk. Eyes drifted between the coffee cup and Mello’s lips, and the way he wrinkled his nose with each sip. 

“Something happened.”

“Drop it.”

“But—“

“Fucking _drop it_.”  
~~

Mello kneeled in the pew at the church down the street while Matt sat next to him, his hands curled into each other.

Mello prayed.

He prayed and prayed and prayed, but it didn’t make a damned of a difference.

Here, especially, he was lonely.

Matt didn’t say a word. Behind his goggles, his eyes were transfixed on the statue of Christ, hanging in the front of the church. 

And they talked about forgiveness.

They fucking talked about forgiveness and the uselessness of revenge. The words were bitter on the back of his tongue. 

He’d fucking kill the people who did this to him. 

Everyone stood up to sing.

He felt empty.

Alone.

Bright.

It was too bright.

_Bright white alone don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me get that away from my face_

_Fucking faggot_

_You liked that fucking handjob?_

_Get away don’t touch me leave me alone leave me alone_

Mello grabbed Matt by the wrist, and pulled them out of the church. 

 


	7. Little Black Box

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “No, you don’t want him to be on coke. Kid, that’s different,” Rod said with a laugh. Reminding Mello that it really wasn’t his fucking problem.
> 
> “Rod, he’s not on mother fucking coke!”

_May the Kingdom and the power and the glory be yours, now and forever_.

Matt knocked his feet against the edge of the pew, his boots too heavy and too loud. He folded his hands in his lap, while Mello stayed on his knees, fingers laced with each other and pressed to his head. Mello’d been doing more of that, lately. Praying with his lips moving so fast that Matt couldn’t catch the words. 

Praying for sanity.

For success, maybe.

Matt wasn’t sure. He didn’t ask, and he didn’t really want to know. Unsettled and unspoken between them, neither hadn’t said much in the days since his roommate’s return. Mello, with his hands clutched so hard that his knuckles turned a milky white, kept everything in that neat little box in the back of his head. All contained and packaged without a flaw. 

The organ vibrated through his chest, groaning low and airy in his ears. 

Mello was lonely.

The church walls were white, and the sun shone garish through the stained glass windows. 

He couldn’t breathe. Matt could tell, by the frantic rising and falling of his chest, that he was freaking the fuck out.

The priest spoke. “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.”

In an instant, organ still blaring, Mello was on his feet, hands moving to zip up his coat. “We need to leave.”

“Mello, you didn’t even get—“ 

“ _Now_.”

_You always used to stay for Communion_.

“Okay. Okay, chill, man,” Matt mumbled, following behind him out the side of the pew and to the back of the church. 

One week.

One week was exactly how long it took for the breakdown to happen. Was it the noise? Maybe. The self reflection that the church service had forced upon him? Matt couldn’t put a finger on it, but it happened before Mello was even completely in the car. With the door swung open, he clung to the handle until his knuckles were surely white beneath his leather gloves. 

Eyes blown wide, Matt knew this was going to be horrific. 

“Get in the car,” Matt said, quick, harsh, all but pushing Mello inside and shutting the door behind him. Not in public. At least had to get him somewhere quiet. 

He didn’t cry.

_Good_ , because Matt didn’t know how to handle that. But his eyes were that freaky ass wide again, and his hands knotted themselves together, poised perfectly in his lap. He was _so_ tense. So fucking tense that it stressed Matt out even when he wasn’t looking. 

Mello looked like he was doing that same thing he always did, tucking everything into that neat little box in the back of his head. Out of sight, out of mind.

Except now, that pretty little box was overflowing.

Matt needed a joint to deal with this. God, he was still high from whatever the fuck he popped this morning, and he _still_ needed a joint.

Mello’s heart had to have been pounding.

“Mel?”

Didn’t even hear him. 

Matt slipped a hand up his thigh. 

Mello shoved it right off of him. 

Okay, not a good idea, then. 

When they were younger, Mello had always been physical. The two of them always hung off of each other, fought with teach other, clung to each other like their lives depended on it. 

Now, Mello recoiled from it.

He looked pale, ghostly, his lips pinched into a thin line and his chin quivering while he heaved out breaths through his nose. 

“ _Mello_.”

That got through. His eyes snapped to Matt, wide, frantic, and he could tell already that this was an oncoming panic attack. _Just hold off till we get back, man. Come on, five more minutes. Five more minutes, I’ll grab you something to help_.

He made it, and Matt let him clunk up the stairs of their shitty apartment complex first, tossing him the keys as they went. 

Three steps into the apartment, barely enough time for the door to shut behind the both of them, was when everything went to shit. Mello ripped his coat off, hand extending towards Matt with no intention of grabbing on. “I need to sit.”

Matt’s eyes snapped right to his arm. Greens and purples, with splotches of yellow in between.

_Are those…?_ “Okay. Kitchen?” 

“Doesn’t matter.”

He helped Mello sink into one of the rickety kitchen chairs.He buried his face in his hands, rubbing at his eyes. His chest heaved, and he breathed with his mouth parted, trying to suck in the shaky gulps of air that caught in his throat. 

He almost sounded like he was sobbing.

Almost.

Matt made him a cup of hot chocolate, and grabbed a few unmarked pills from the beat up lunchbox he kept tucked away with his extra tech shit. Placing the cup down on the table, he eased himself into a the chair next to his best friend, his hands resting on either side of him. 

“Here.” He held the pills out, and Mello just stared. 

“The fuck’s that shit?”

“It’ll help you relax.” 

“I don’t want it.”

“Mel, you need to fucking chill.” But this wasn’t normal, because Mello never acted like this. Not with the screaming, not with the nightmares, not with anything he’d seen his best friend have to carry on his shoulders. Now, it seemed completely out of his control. He didn’t cry, but he was crumbling, his body trembling while his mind tried to piece everything together.

“I don’t need that shit.”

“I didn’t say—“

“Put it _away_ , Matt.”

This was fucking horrific.

_What the fuck happened to you_?

~~

“Kid, I thought you were fuckin’ _dead_. You should’ve seen the guys around here, we’ve been fuckin _freaking_ , man!” Rod all but shouted. And hell, he looked genuinely worried. Tedious, now, but Mello tucked that little reminder in the back of his mind.

Rod needed him.

Mello kept his coat zipped up. It was brutally hot, but the last thing he wanted was to flash around the track marks that’d stained his body. 

He was nauseous as all hell.

Had been, since the day he got out. Clammy skin clung to the lining of his jacket, and he swallowed.

“I wasn’t that lucky,” Mello said with a halfhearted laugh. A grin twisted itself onto his lips, despite all of this.

Rod couldn’t tell the fucking difference. He laughed, and Lee laughed right along with him.

Fucking morons.

He felt lonely.

No, not even.

Isolated.

Rod needed him.

He didn’t feel much of anything at all.

And he needed to. 

He needed to, to distance himself. When he slept, it was all white with white walls white noise white tastes white _everything_.

“You get the guns?”

“Of course. Branden’s a good man.”

_Yeah, real fuckin’ grand._ Mello shut his eyes for a moment, and let his head fall back. Against the couch, it was so fucking hot that his palms stuck to worn leather. “I want him dead.”

“What?” 

Yeah, of course they didn’t fucking know.

Why would they?

“Branden’s connected to the Kelly family.”

“He’s connected to everyone, kid.”

Mello snorted. “Yeah? Well, he wasn’t happy about their daughter’s ‘disappearance.”

Rod leaned back, thoughtful. He waited for Mello to continue.

He unzipped his jacket, because they weren’t going to get anywhere without it. He flashed bruises along his neck, the marks on his stomach, and the track marks that ran up his arms. Rod’s eyes widened, but he didn’t say a word.

Would’ve had to’ve been real fucking stupid not to know what was coming next.

“Had a guy undercover in Pennsylvania.” _A fucking whore, too_. “Caught me in New York to send a message.” 

“Branden’s guys did that?” 

Mello hummed. “You’ve heard of White Torture.”

“Who hasn’t?”

That got the point across.

They’d sent a message, alright. 

“I want him _dead_ , Rod.” 

“Just him?”  


“I’ll take care of everyone else on my own.” He rolled his shoulders. “Two weeks. I want his fucking head.”

~~  


Mello sunk into his seat. Exchange LA was packed, as per usual, but they sat in a private room where the hum of the club beneath them seeped through the flooring. It’s nothing more than a dull beat in their ears, but it sounded good after a few drinks.

“Rod, that’s a shit idea.”

He only laughed. Everything’s a God damned joke with these guys. “She’s a nice gal, you’ll like her.”

“That’s not the issue.” Mello didn’t really give a fuck if he’d like her or not. Point being, he was _not_ doing any more fucking grunt work. After the New York incident, he wasn’t taking any fucking chances. 

Of course she was nice.They’re all fucking _nice_ , and they have to be, to handle anyone from the family. Brutal men and just as brutal women that could plaster sweet smiles on their faces while they turned blind eyes to the violence. They eagerly accepted envelopes full of drug money from their boyfriends every week, and acted like the world was given to them on a silver fucking platter.

Lilian worked as a waitress in the new diner down the street, but Zakk brought her an envelope full of crisp twenty dollar bills every week. One thousand dollars of brand new American Dollars, slipped right into her pretty little hands. 

“She’s nice lookin’, too. Not an eyesore for the evening, y’know?”

Mello sighed, and squeezed his eyes shut. Of course, she was lovely. Then again, that wasn’t anything to go by—anyone breathing was a beautiful woman to Rod. 

_Soft. Hands off don’t touch me get off get off get off_

“I’m really not interested.”

“Man, you fucked the hell out’ve Abigail. You’re gettin’ freaked over a night out?” Rod laughed, and Mello bit on the inside of his mouth. “Couple glasses of wine, go for a nice dinner, no big deal, y’know? The guys do it all the time.” He slipped Mello another drink, and he eagerly sipped at it. “Besides, Zakk won’t mind if you sneak a—“

“Rod, man, I have a fucking _date,_ ” Mello lied, the anger slipping naturally into his voice. _Fuck that. Fuck, no._ And Rod, even, couldn’t hold back his surprise. “I’m _busy_.”

They sit in silence, until the humming of the music below started to ring in Mello’s ears. 

“Yeah? She nice?” 

“We’ll see.” 

“You know anyone that can take her out? The guys are busy.” 

_No, they just don’t fucking want to_.

“Maybe.”

“Yeah?"

“I’ll ask my roommate.” 

“He’s a gentleman?”

“Sure.”

Now, it was all laughs, too hard pats on the back, and dating advice that made Mello cringe. “How’s your addition?”

Mello was a few drinks too many in, and his eyes blinked one at a time when he tried to focus on Rod. “What?”   
“Your friend.”

“ _Matt_?”

“Sure, Matt.”

Mello blinked a few times, more than drunk at this point. “Alright.”

“Yeah?”

“Think he’s on something.”

“So?”

Mello breathed heavy through his nose. “He’s the kind of asshole that’ll just turn up dead.”

Rod snorted, but nodded in understanding. With Matt, it was always _more_. Pushed himself to stay up, pushed himself to stay high, pushed himself to get his work done as fast as fucking possible. 

After a moment, he shrugged. “I’m overthinking.”

“His nose runs a lot?”

Mello rose a brow. “Mm?”  


“That’s coke. Or _somethin’._ But he’s probably not well versed enough to snort much more than that.”

“Matt isn’t on fucking coke.”

“No, you don’t _want_ him to be on coke. Kid, that’s different,” Rod said with a laugh. Reminding Mello that it really wasn’t his fucking problem.

“Rod, he’s not on mother fucking _coke_!”

“Chill, man, just pulling your arm,” Rod chuckled. “He looks like he’s on somethin’?”

“Of course he fucking looks like he’s on something! Why the fuck would I pull something like that out of my ass?!”  


Rod nodded along with this, and shrugged. “You’ll figure it out, one way or another.” He seemed to hum thoughtfully at his drink. Mello couldn’t imagine _how_ thoughtful it could possibly be, with Rod’s I.Q. “He thin?”

“Yeah, pretty thin.”

“You thin, or cocaine thin?”

“How the _fuck_ am I supposed to know?!”

“You know what they look like. All the same. Tiny lookin’ guys, got that dead look in their eyes.”

Yeah, that was Matt.   
And sure, he hadn’t seen him without layers of clothes on, but he _could_ be. His wrists were thin and veiny, and he was practically swimming in his clothes.

Cocaine thin.

“He’s not.”

Rod ordered them a round of shots. 

~~

“ _Mello?”_

_“Mhm?” Nine years old, he sat trembling in his bed. It was never storms, never loud noises or the creaking of old floorboards. It was always the essence of a dream not quite remembered, and a fear welling up deep in his chest that couldn’t be explained._

_“Can’t sleep?”_

_He didn’t know Matt very well. He was still that same stupid looking asshole with a missing front tooth that made him whistle when he tried to say certain words. But he was friendly._

_Mello wasn’t sure if he loved that, or hated it._

_Matt’d always been friendly, as a child. Early on, anyway. Always smiling, with his face covered thick in freckles. They snaked down his neck and onto his arms, and Mello traced the patterns with his eyes._

_In the dark, he swallowed, and could see nothing._

_“Yeah.”_

_“Come here.”_

_“No.”_

_“Okay.”_

_Matt would go there, then. Padding across cold wooden flooring, he hit Mello’s bed before sinking two hands against the mattress. “Nightmares?”_

_“Dunno.”_

_“How don’t you know?”_

_Mello shrugged. “Just don’t.”_

_“Move over.”_

_“No.”_

_“Please?”Mello didn’t say another word, but in his twin sized mattress, he rolled just slightly enough to the side to let Matt squeeze himself under the covers. His skin was too hot, and he smelled like shitty soap, Mello wrinkled his nose, and had half a mind to kick him out._

_A hand draped over his torso, and he went rigid. “It’s okay.”_

_He couldn’t see Matt’s face in the dark, but he could feel the squirming of Matt’s feet against his while he tried to make himself comfortable. Mello shut his eyes, and Matt watched until he fell asleep._

~~  


Mello snapped his computer off, and all but tossed it off of the bed. 

Withdrawals.

_Fucking_ withdrawals.

And he had no idea what the fuck they’d pumped into his system. But the nausea, the _bugs_ under his fucking _skin_. His head throbbed right behind his eyes, and he needed _something_.

He scratched at his forearms. Skin already streaked with red scratches, he dug deeper, harder, until he was sure the skin would break.

He couldn’t die from this, he reminded himself.

He wanted to talk to Matt.

They weren’t children anymore.

_You thin, or cocaine thin?_

_They’ve all got that same fucking look in their eyes._

While Matt slipped in and out of CIA security, Mello circled the couch before moving to the kitchen for a glass. He was hungry. Still drunk. The kitchen closed long before Rod’d dropped his sorry ass off back home.

Matt was on the fire escape when Mello got home. “Yo,” he greeted, poking his head back into the apartment. “Got the whole city on those fuckin’ laptops, man.” He grinned widely, and shuffled across the apartment, his boots scuffing the already scratched up floorboards. “Was fuckin’ around with some of the CIA—“ 

“You free Thursday?” Mello asked, completely ignoring whatever the hell his roommate was talking about. He’d look at it later.

“What? Yeah, sure.” Matt’s mouth opens in a toothy, crooked grin. “We goin’ somewhere?” 

“Take Zakk’s girl on a date.”

He tried to ignore the way his face fell. “Oh.” Matt looked back and forth between Mello and the computers a few times. “Uh, you need someone to?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure, if it helps.”

“Pick her up at seven. Don’t be late, and don’t do anything that’ll end up with your brains against the wall.” _  
~~_

Mello never smiled anymore.

Not in the car, not when they went out, not when Matt made stupid jokes and did his best to take his best friend’s mind off of that packed up box in the back of his head. Mello was a pain in the ass.

Mello was miserable. With his wide, freakish eyes and the darkening bruises beneath them that said he never slept enough anymore. His snarl of a mouth and the way his knuckles tensed white whenever he wasn’t wearing his gloves. 

“You paint your nails?” 

Mello shrugged. “Yeah.”

Matt hummed, not once looking away from the street. He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel, drumming a rhythm that didn’t make any sense. Mello kept one elbow propped against the window, the other tightened into a fist against his thigh. Jaw locked, his teeth must have always been grinding against each other. 

“Looks good.”

There was a flicker of movement on Mello’s face. Mouth twisting downward, eyes shooting to Matt’s form. 

Matt couldn’t even read that.

“Okay.”

_What happened to you_?

_Why won’t you let me help you_?

“Matt.”

“Mhm?”

“What are you on?” 

It was astonishing, that Mello pinpointed it so fast. No, so bluntly. Easing his foot onto the break a little too harshly, the car jerked to a near stop just outside of the apartment. Behind amber frames, his eyes were drooped. Mello couldn’t know. Fingers flexed inside of warm leather, tap tap fucking tapping against the edge of the steering wheel. 

No, he could.

It was obvious, after all. His face gave it all away. And hell, if Mello saw him even once without his shirt on, that would be that. 

“I’m not.”

As children, Mello would hang all over him.

Now, physicality was reserved for manipulation and threats.

He leaned towards Matt, never once looking at him. Hands smoothed away from himself and across the arm rest. Pale, bony hands laced with veins. Pitch black nails dug into cheap leather. 

Matt wanted to touch.

Now wasn’t a good time for this.

His mind always tended to mix these things up, anyway. 

“You are.”

The hand slipped forward. 

Matt let it. 

Warm against his jeans, scraping into denim. One wrong move, and Mello could pierce him. 

“Yeah?” 

“Your pupils are dilated.” It wasn’t a gentle. Hell, the words ‘gentle’ and ‘Mello’ could hardly be fitting in the same sentence. The high almost made Matt laugh. Oh, he knew better. That’d be his head, this time. 

_Are we clear?_

_Crystal_.

“Your hands are shaking.”

“No, I’m moving them.”

“They’re shaking.”

“…Yeah.”

“You wanna play this game?” Mello asked, the warning thick between his lips. Such a lovely mouth for such deadly words. 

So _fucking_ high.

His head rolled to the side.

Mello’s snapped to meet him.

He’d gotten _nastier_. 

And for some reason, quiet Mello seemed more lethal than loud Mello.

Mello shoved the car door open, and hit the tar with the heels of his steel toed boots. Drained. Hunched shoulders and sharpened, bony blades pressed his jacket. His form spun, and bits of gravel crunched beneath his feet. 

“Quit it, Nancy Boy.” 

Matt laughed. Mello whipped around as soon as the noise came from his lips. He eased himself out of the car, and his roommate was already there to meet him. 

“That’s fuckin’ funny?” 

Oh, shit.

But what the fuck did he care? Mello was pissing him off. Not his business. Hell, Mello _dealt_ drugs. What the fuck else’d he been in New York for? And God only knew what the fuck he was doing on his own for a month. He got back fucked the hell up, but it wasn’t like Matt hadn’t done the same before. 

Matt couldn’t stop laughing.   
That was the final nail in the coffin.

“What the fuck are you on?!” 

Matt walked away, because it was none of Mello’s damned business. If he could blast someone’s head off behind a bar, then Matt could pop whatever the fuck he wanted. 

The apartment door slammed open, clattering loudly against the back wall. Mello hated his goggles. Staring him down, he could see his fingers twitching, itching to rip them off of his fucking face. Okay, fuck Mello.

_Fucking self righteous asshole_.

“ _Matt_.”

“Mello, cut the shit.” 

His hands were shaking. Hell, his whole body was moving separate from his voice. 

Mello. 

He stared down at Matt, and shit, he realized for the first time that Mello was taller than him. 

For the first time, Matt wanted to wrap his fingers around that pretty little throat and _kill_ him. This was his business. Mello didn’t have the fucking _right_.

And this was all he had.

Mello was _not_ taking this away from him.

God, Matt was really fucking high.

Fuck Mello and his stupid fucking attitude. 

_Fuck him_.

“I can’t—“

“Mind your own damned business!” 

Mello’s eyes narrowed, and _fuck_ , he looked even nastier than usual. 

He looked grotesque.

_Something happened_.

Matt was too high to give a fuck. 

“I don’t want that shit in my fucking apartment.”

The same panic from the church was there, bubbling into the way he set his jaw and clenched his hands.

_Something fucking happened_.

Mello’s hands grasped at the goggles. Matt pulled back, but the things were jerked off of his head. Even _he_ knew how dilated his pupils were.

Mello looked disgusted.

Matt, for a moment, wanted to kiss him. 

Or give him a good crack in the face.

Mello was close, and his eyes traced Matt’s face, the bruising beneath his eyes and the pallid texture of his freckled skin. 

Matt, by no means, was beautiful. He had janked up teeth, too many freckles, lanky limbs and a cocaine thin frame. 

“When the fuck’d you get to be so posh?” Matt snickered.

Yeah, that really pushed Mello’s buttons. And the more agitated Mello got, the more placid Matt became. 

Mello didn’t hit him, and that worried him, because he could fuck up Matt with a lot more than his fists. 

What Mello didn’t seem to understand was that Matt could hit back just as hard.

He wanted to kiss him.

“I didn’t let you stay so you could OD on my damn floor.”

“Who said I would?”

Mello’s eyes drifted from his face, and there was a look in his eyes that Matt’d never seen on him. He shoved his goggles back into shaking hands, and his fingers _lingered_. He stared. 

Matt rubbed at his eye with the palm of his hand, barely registering the sensation of skin against skin. Mello’s mouth pursed, a thin line that was all fury and hesitant desire.

_Fuck_ , Matt thought. It wasn’t a reach, because he knew Mello. Even when he freaked the fuck out like this, he _knew_ him. They’d only known each other, only opened up to each other.

The thought is so sharp, so staggering, that it shuts Matt’s throat and keeps any more words from getting out. 

It wasn’t a one way street anymore.


	8. Lull

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "At least five times in the past hour, Matt checked to make sure Mello hadn’t touched any of his shit. And every time, his heart was in his throat, just in case.
> 
> Mello wasn’t even home.
> 
> But he had the thought in his head, and it was the rinse and repeat of remember, check, forget, panic."

Mello had the bedroom door locked, slumped down in his desk chair with his hand on his cock. His chest, legs, completely bare, bruises of the “incident” glaring up at him. If he closed his eyes, he didn’t have to see. If he felt, he didn’t have to remember. 

He tilted his head back, and exhaled. God, this was turning into a mess.

Recently, he’d become smitten to the idea of a man between his legs. A man groping at him, fondling him, kissing up his thighs with chapped lips and a rough, pink tongue. A mouth going down on him, while hands guided his legs around them.

Grotesque.

Matt fucking knocked on the God damn door.

Mello hissed, ripping his boxers and pants up so quickly that the zipper tore against the inside of his leg, leaving a cold, stinging red streak. He could fucking _smell_ sex. With a shudder and the slip of his gloves back over his hands, he reached for the door. “Yeah?”

It was always past midnight, when he had anything to say. A pain in the ass, but it wasn’t like Mello was sleeping much, anyway.

Matt wasn’t lovely. His hair was nice—matted waves of a thick auburn that spilled around his face. Matt’s jawline had always been too wide. Hair always just long enough, just messy enough to fall in his face and hide it. 

His hair used to be a lovely ginger. At Wammy’s, he’d accidentally dyed it brown then a mossy green, then back to ginger, and now auburn. 

Matt got bored easily.

Mello became obsessive over little things. 

Perhaps, they were polar opposites. 

Matt had nice eyes. When they were children. Big, bright emerald things that lit up whenever Mello was around. 

Now, he looked like a fucking coke whore. He seemed to fade away, ass planted on Mello’s couch. He was dull, a smear in an even more dull apartment. 

Mello wasn’t exactly an eyeful, either. Women told him he was beautiful. That he had a young, sharp face, and icy blue eyes that held so much emotion and so much danger. He hated the way he looked.

His eyes were disturbed.

Nasty.

Just like L had said. Just like B had reminded him, with sick laughs and hands on his jaw. 

Mello looked like a fucking asshole, bottom line. Forget attractiveness, forget how quick he could get someone’s dick up—he looked like a son of a fucking bitch. The door swung open, and he stared Matt down, his cock still hot and stiff against his pants. 

Matt wasn’t high, but he looked like he was getting the shakes.

_He’s that addicted, then_ , Mello noted, and motioned for Matt to take a few steps back so he could slip out of the room and shut the door. His roommate chewed on his chapped lips, and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, back and forth back and forth back and forth. 

_Just fucking stand still_.   
Crammed sideways behind his boxers, Mello’s cock throbbed. Matt, with his hair just less than dripping, stood with a soaked towel hanging over his shoulders and against his chest.

Cocaine thin. 

The thought of Matt’s legs creeping around his waist, of Mello jerking one leg up so it dangled over his shoulder while he snapped their hips together in a quick, filthy fuck. 

What frightened him was that it wasn’t a mantra of _I love you I want you please fuck me please show me how much I mean to you_. 

It was all sex, bites and nails, broken skin and nasty bruises. Mello wanted them to ruin each other. To take turns baring their teeth, and seeing how far they could push before the other one crumpled to a heap at their feet. Matt would twist beneath him, writhing at scratches that tore open his back, at nails that sank into his hipbones while they rutted against each other. 

He would scream, his pupils dilated, mouth agape and tongue twitching against his janked up teeth. 

God, Mello was fucked up. 

The thought made him shudder with a sick, twisted sense of pleasure.

Matt, he thought, would be quite good at that. He was laid back, but he could throw one hell of a punch. And in his eyes wasn’t just heavy drug use—it was horror. Aggression.

They were both Wammy kids.

They both had this shit in them. Matt was a druggie, and he, up to his throat in the family, was a pervert. His skin crawled at the thought. At the fucking _irony_.

Without Mello’s help, Matt’d already killed. 

“I tracked the van.”

“What good’s that gonna do me?”

“Well, it hit wherever the coke went. Figured I could start pulling some names.”

“For _what_.”

The corner of Matt’s mouth twitched, and he shrugged. “Curiosity.”

That meant the son of a bitch knew something. No, he couldn’t have. Mello killed the cameras before he even hit New York. And he hadn’t breathed a single fucking word of what he’d gone through in those thirty days. 

“Do what you want,” was all Mello said. And that was dangerous, because Matt would push until he found _everything_. Like Mello, if he wanted something, he would have it. 

Absentmindedly, he rubbed against the bruises on his arms. 

~

Matt triple checked every day to make sure that stupid, drug filled lunch box was still there. Mello _would_ go through his shit when he turned his back, and he wasn’t about to risk a couple hundred dollars worth of shit going to waste because his roommate had a stick up his ass.

Mello, by no means, had been doing well with it.

Matt fucked himself up real bad. Bought acid from a kid around his age on the street, and downed it. But anxiety before an acid trip meant anxiety during an acid trip. So he ended up on the hardwood floor, his face pressed to the cool surface, trying to take in shallow, frantic breaths.

He was getting the fucking spider thing, now. Prickling, tingling flesh, like there were things fucking crawling all over him. 

Everything felt _soft._ Any desertion of texture was completely gone, leaving Matt confused, tripping fucking sack like all hell, and sprawled out on the floor. 

Matt could eat off a couple of drinks.

Couldn’t eat this shit off. 

All he could think of was _Mello_.

For twelve hours, at least, he was stuck on this shit ass trip. With a groan, his hands slipped across the floor and he pushed himself up. 

Had to take a piss.

Matt made the mistake of looking in the mirror. His face was moving, distorted, and he could make out every pore on his face, every strand of hair that sat on his head. His eyeballs were red from the joint, and his pupils were dilated as all fucking hell, turning his irises near black from the expansion. 

Oh, shit.

He snorted out a laugh, and there he was, clinging to the sink, fingers grasping the porcelain surface so hard that his knuckles turned a bright, trembling white. Christ, he was high as _shit_. He laughed again, caught in the same cycle of laughing, amused by the image of himself that he doesn’t really recognize as his own in the mirror, until tears are running down his cheeks.

He needed water. 

So there he was, splashing water on his face, and drinking from the faucet with cupped hands, trying to shake off the high. Even like this, he knew acid didn’t work that way. 

Fucking stupid Mello.

At least five times in the past hour, Matt checked to make sure Mello hadn’t touched any of his shit. And every time, his heart was in his throat, just in case. 

Mello wasn’t even home.

But he had the thought in his head, and it was the rinse and repeat of remember, check, forget, panic. 

Matt hated his reflection. His face was too crowded, too much going on. He fastened his goggles over his eyes, and made his way out of the bathroom. Maybe, he needed to go for a walk. Face red from too cold water, he pulled on his boots, and spent a good ten minutes fuming with the side zipper before finally getting it secured. He saw his hands move, but he couldn’t register them as his own. 

Matt had a bad habit of trying to destroy himself. 

He popped a cigarette between his lips, and lit it as soon as he was out of the complex. Wasn’t sure if he could drive like this, so he’d walk. Normally, he hated going outside. Right now, the city air felt cool on his face.

Matt sat at an In ‘n Out Burger, knocking back cup after paper cup of water, swishing it around in his mouth and swallowing in too large gulps that made the water feel thick down his throat. On his paper bag, he stacked his french fries up into a tower, chin against the wobbly table, sticky with soda from the last customers that’d sat there. 

He didn’t even notice. 

He rubbed his gloves, smeared with french fry oil, against his jeans, and picked his head up. Better get back home. Headlights whirr by him, and the LED’s of convenience stores, restaurants, and clubs dancing in front of his vision, too bright, too garish, even with his goggles on. 

He’d go home, pull up a few more names from what he could slip into, and figure this shit out. Mello, probably, left out a few details about his absence. 

Matt didn’t really care one way or another, but he needed a few projects going at once to keep himself entertained, and this was all he could think of. Bottom line, he was just curious. 

Didn’t really make a difference to him one way or another what he pulled up. 

And Mello hadn’t gotten angry when he mentioned it. It made sense, that he wouldn’t—as long as he got his work for his friend done, all was well. 

He walked into the apartment to Mello peeling off his leather jacket.

“Jesus Christ, Mel, I’m sweating just lookin’ at you.” He knew Mello hated the nickname.

By now, he just pursed his lips, rolled his eyes, and dealt with it. 

Mello sneered, and rolled his eyes. “You’re wearing a fur vest, shit head.” Matt broke into a fit of laughter, and his roommate stared. 

“You high?”

“Sure.”

“Drink water.” Matt listened, even though he drank what felt like an entire gallon at the burger joint, and filled a tea stained mug with tap before downing it in a few large gulps.

Mello was quiet. 

Uninterested in him. 

Irritated.

Matt, vaguely, could feel himself worried. No, aggravated. Because it wasn’t Mello’s damned business what he was doing. He flopped himself down onto the couch and pulled his laptop open, and his roommate stood up. “Where’d you go?”

“In ’n Out.”

“Uhuh?”  


Matt’s eyes fluttered, and he caught the slightest glimpse of Mello staring, his eyes wide and lips pursed. Trying to analyze. Trying to absorb exactly what the fuck was going on in his best friend’s head.

Matt’s body sank into the couch, and he slumped. Couldn’t focus, like this. Should’ve had Adderall instead. Maybe, he’d learn eventually. But for now, he was content, tripping the hell out and staring at the coding in front of him. 

“I killed someone four months ago.”

Mello’s mouth twisted into a frown. He was going to ask why the hell Matt was bringing it up, why the hell it even mattered in the first place, and how high he was to even mention it in the first place. “Yeah?” is all he said, uncrossing his legs and spreading them while he leaned forward. Elbow on his knee, his body curled into itself, and Matt stared.

Mello looked like a murderer.

Matt just looked like a guy.

And maybe, he figured, that Mello got away with it because murderers are never supposed to look like murderers. Reverse psychology. That, or the simple, effective blanket of blissful ignorance.

But just like Winchester, the cops were dirty. 

Didn’t give a shit, as long as it wasn’t one of their guys. Matt could understand that. With the track record Mello had, getting involved meant their heads. 

Literally, in this case.

Matt bit back a laugh.

“Sure,” he hummed. “For two thousand dollars,” he added. Looking back on it, that was cheap. For the guy he was sent after, he could have gotten at least seven and then some.

But he was just a kid.

He didn’t _enjoy_ the act of killing, by any means. It was messy. And a lot of the time, he was sloppy. Shot the wrong way, had to fire off the gun more than once. Used a knife, on a couple of occasions. The first time, Matt’d forgotten he was wearing a white shirt. He was careless.

But he liked the flicker in their eyes before they died. Sometimes, acceptance. Sometimes, anger. Usually, fear. Natural, he would think, with the body kicking for its last attempt at survival. Matt cracked his knuckles. That was the way it was, though. And for a couple thousand dollars, he wasn't going to say no. 

“You did hits,” Mello stated, nodding to himself. Scrawled on his face was disappointment. For what reason, Matt couldn’t even begin to guess. The two of them were no different, now.

Maybe, that was it. 

“There was a woman in London. Her daughter picked up a boy, dated him for a couple of years. He, uh, slept around a lot, and when she found out, he cracked her in the face. A real fuckin’ good hit, apparently.”

“Yeah?” 

God, to think he was sizing Mello up while talking about who’s head he’d splattered against the wall. It was fine.

Neither of them were quite right, anyway.

“She gave me two grand to get rid of him. Even flew me all the way out to Brussels to find the sorry bloke.”

“Did you feel guilty?”

Matt shrugged. “I cleaned it up, went down the street, and got myself a whole goddamn pizza, and downed it.” 

That was the way the world worked, though. Shit news, shit jobs, gory shit that should have turned his stomach and twisted his chest with guilt. Instead, Matt let it go like water under a bridge, and went to get himself lunch. 

“Christ,” was all Mello breathed out, and tilted his head back to look at the ceiling. 

He must have been warm.

Matt leaned in, and his friend didn’t even budge. His eyes flicked to the side, dull, tired, thick with an exhaustion that passed beyond rest. Mello didn’t need to talk about his own shit—Matt already knew every step he took towards Hell. Every kill, every job, down to the fucking clothes he was wearing on each day. 

Matt liked the idea of observation. 

“Mello,” he breathed against his friend’s throat, his head buried in the space between his neck and shoulder. Against his face, he could feel Mello’s pulse, hot and quick beneath his skin. Just a quick brush of his head, and his lips would be against the older boy’s jugular. “You’re not even seventeen,” he reminded him.

He was so _high_. There must’ve been a point to why he opened his mouth, but he couldn’t remember it for the life of him. Now, it was all physicality and the sound of his voice rasping out of his mouth, while Mello tensed up beneath him. 

Matt already felt like he’d lived most of his life. It was aimless stumbling, now. That’s what landed him back with Mello, and the deeper he got, the more disjointed his attempts to think of the future became. 

“Don’t talk like you’re my father,” Mello snapped, and Matt’s skin prickled with the anticipation of touch. Above his head, his best friend’s hand lingered. Not for a smack, but maybe a card through his hair, or a simple tap against his skull.

Nothing.   


Mello’s hand sunk back against the top of the couch. This was dangerous. This, talking to Mello when the words were coming out faster than he could process or remember them. He couldn’t think. It was all sensation, all feeling and warped reality, dancing gleefully in front of his eyes while he tried to put the pieces together.

Matt wanted to tell him everything. Wanted to talk and talk about God only knew what, with his face buried against Mello’s shoulder was warm. He saw, but he couldn’t speak. He saw blood, brains on his jeans, and the smoking barrel of a gun in his hands. 

Mello smelled of sweat and chocolate. Matt wasn’t sure if it was appealing, or if he was high and lonely. It was disgusting, that this was all his high amounted to. Cheap sensations, a thrill that lasted for a half a day and sent him spiral downwards, with bugs under his skin, and his mind so groggy that he couldn’t think. 

Loved the high, hated the recovery.

Matt cupped Mello’s face with his hands, and turned him, fingers lingering in his hair. He expected it to be soft. Easy to curl his fingers around. 

It felt starched, and he realized, then, that his roommate was just lucky it fell this way. 

“Do I look like a fag?” Mello snapped, his face red with something that was closer to shame than anger. _Sensitive topic_. Matt’d noticed before, the way that his eyes had snapped wide at the mention of nail polish. No, the mention of attraction. 

_Yeah, you do_.

“Do I?” 

“Don’t fuck around.”

“You’re lovely.”

Mello’s mouth gaped, and he stammered, actually _stammered_ , and pulled himself to his feet. He should have gone to the kitchen. That’s what Matt would have thought. Or, he would have stalked off to his room, his hands jammed into his pockets. Instead, his hand snapped to Matt’s jaw, clenching hard enough for him to hold back a wince.

Matt thought it’d be funny to to open his mouth and try to lick Mello’s gloved hand. Fingers slipped into his mouth, and it was hardly sexual. Mello fucking fish hooked him, snagging the side of his mouth so hard that he tried to snap his teeth down, and he was stuck, Mello’s fingers waving him around like a fucking _jackass_.

“L’goa me,” Matt drawled, speech impacted from the digits in his mouth. Anyone else, and he would have pressed his tongue against the intrusion in his mouth. Anyone else, he would’ve offered to fuck. Smeared across Mello’s face was absolute calm. 

Nothing that could indicate the threat that lingered on the tips of his fingers. This, Matt acknowledged again, was dangerous. 

“Am I still _lovely_ , Matt?” And there was that flash in his eyes again. Desire. 

He was dancing around a sinner, a boy with golden blond hair and a fucking pit of a heart. _He wouldn’t hurt me._ Still, Matt tried to clear his throat.

Right. That idea went to shit not ten minutes after they’d been reunited. 

It fucking sucked. 

Mello jerked back, and wiped his hand on Matt’s jeans.

“You’re gonna get yourself fucked up.”

Matt laughed, practically howling. “I’m not kind.”

“You act like a pussy around me.”

Matt snickered, and cracked his neck. “Mel?”

His eyes drifted over Matt’s face, half lidded. “Mm.”

“What’s it like, to cut someone’s head off?”

The conversation was over. 

Mello stood, and clicked his steel toed boots against the wooden floor.

“Bloody.”


	9. Eight Ball

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You do that yourself?”
> 
> Another shot. Mello screwed the cap back on. He coughed, wincing at the stinging sweet taste of whisky, and shivered. 
> 
> “Do I look like a fucking doctor?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> " Eight ball - A drug reference: a combination of coaine and heroin"

Mello woke up with a twisted stomach and nausea that sent him running out of bed at seven in the morning to vomit. 

Matt watched him, tweaking out after an eight ball that was probably a little too much, and sat himself down on the edge of the bathtub. Mello looked like shit, with his clammy, placid skin. Ghostly sick. On the inside of his wrist, there was swelling. Greens and yellows that Matt knew all too well. He pursed his lips, and told himself that no, Mello wouldn’t.

“Take off your shirt.”

Mello groaned, and rolled his shoulders. His head was back in the toilet, retching. “Fuck _off_.”

“You wanna barf all over your expensive clothes?” 

That did it. Reluctantly, Mello spit, wiped his face with a wad of toilet paper, and eased the black article off of his torso. Rolled up into a ball, he chucked it into the corner. 

“Mel?”His voice dropped, shocked to see the beginning of bruising and scabbed flesh across his forearms and up to the crook of his elbows. Sloppily done. Shit that Matt would do when his withdrawal crept up on him. When he _needed_ it. 

On himself, he wouldn’t give a second look. Matt was always reckless. Always the careless one. Always the one that had to give everything a couple of shots.

But Mello wasn’t…supposed to _be_ like that. Lovely, icy Mello wasn’t supposed to have track marks and dilated pupils. Wasn’t supposed to have his head in the toilet, nauseated and trembling from withdrawals. 

Mello looked disgustingly human.

“You shoot up?”

Then why the fuck was he giving Matt shit? He subdued his irritation, trying to remember that Mello, puking his guts up, probably didn’t need to hear what Matt thought about the whole thing.

Slender fingers tightened around the toilet seat. 

_Guilty, maybe?_

On his chest, there were scratches. Across his torso was bruising. A week since he’d gotten back, and he still looked fucked up. Matt traced the way his muscles strained, tense and knotted beneath his skin. He’d lost weight.

He hadn’t had much to lose in the first place.

But if he was puking like this all of the time, Matt figured it made sense. 

_Must’ve gotten into a fight._ Nothing out of the ordinary, though. Mello wasn’t trigger happy, but his temper had turned to shit. One look in the wrong direction, and he’d have his fists up. But he must have had to—kill or be killed, especially with this family. Already, there was talk of turning on each other. Mello had to keep them wrapped around his fingers. 

“It’s fine, Mel,” Matt muttered. It was a risk, but hey, it was _Mello_. It was fine. It’d be fine. Hell, Mello fucking _dealt_ drugs. He slipped his fingers under the hem of his sleeve, up to his bicep. “It’s okay, y’know? I don’t mind.” 

Wrong thing to say, because Mello was forcing himself onto his feet, flushing the toilet, and jamming his toothbrush into his mouth with quivering hands. 

Matt couldn’t even think of what the hell he was on to get him withdrawals that bad.

No, that wasn’t true.

“Mello, hey, take it easy.” 

He spit, rinsed, and whipped to look at Matt with fucking rabid eyes. His body shook, and his words stumbled over each other. “You’re a _fucking_ asshole.”

“What?”

Mello was shaking him, dragging him from the bathroom by his marked up arm. “ _Fuck you_ , you’re a fucking _junkie_!”

He couldn’t believe Mello had no idea. 

No. In his eyes, Matt could tell that he always knew.

And he was disgusted.

But that was Mello. Hypocritical, overly pious when he had no right. 

_Fuck_ him. 

Mello was a God damned pain in the ass. Nastier than before, with track lines and bruises and a thick, faded purple hickey right under his collarbone. “Look at your own arms, shit head.”

Panic. 

The look in his eyes was all panic. He ripped away from Matt, poised to strike.

Matt wanted to knock his fucking teeth out.

“ _Fuck you_.”

“That’s what you ran off and did for a fucking month?”  


“ _No_.” The snarl twisted onto his lips, quick, flashing in a bout of rage that Matt’d rarely seen expressed on Mello’s face. It was always through fists, spurts of fury that seemed to bubble up out of nowhere.

Like the fucking beer bottle. 

“Really? Because all your god damned _skin_ says is you fucked around, doped yourself up, and had a grand fucking time without telling anyone where the _fuck_ you were!”

“Matt—“

“ _No_. You’re always such a fucking bitch, you—“ 

Mello’s hand caught his goggles, and tugged. There was pressure on the back of his head, and the tugging of hair, and snapping of elastic. 

The force of the break surprised even Mello, who came stumbling back with the goggles in his hand. 

Matt caught him by the wrist, and spun him around to pin the limb against his back. 

Still left Mello with one more hand. Their verbal argument had turned into a full blown wresting match, and Matt knew that if he let his roommate get out of this hold, he was _asking_ to get fucked up. Hate swelled up on the back of his tongue. Mello. Motherfucking _Mello_.

Mello was an asshole.

And that’s when he spotted the handcuffs peeking out from his roommate’s back pocket.

Would he?

Would he really fucking do it? 

Because right now, he’d win. As soon as Mello got out, though, it’d be it’s own hell. But Matt’s eyes fixated on the shining metal, and his free hand was already reaching before his mind made the decision.

He was too high to give a fuck. This, too, was past a normal high. This wasn’t bugs under my skin. This combination made him _bold_. 

He clicked the cuffs on to the wrist behind Mello’s back, and he felt the older boy freeze. Yeah, he knew. Matt grasped the other arm, and Mello started bucking up to try and push him off. “Matt.” His voice was steady, dangerous, lingering with a venom that he rarely heard inside of the apartment.

This wasn’t a careless fight anymore.

If Mello got out of this, Matt was fucking dead.

“Let go.”

Matt snorted, the high making this seem that much more amusing. “Do I look like a fucking idiot?” 

The other cuff snapped on, and Mello was immobilized. His body pressed into the couch and weighted down with Matt’s own frame, he was stuck. That didn’t mean he couldn’t ruin Matt. Hell, he could do damage without lifting a God damned finger. 

“I know every fucking dealer in the city. If you think they’re gonna sell you _shit_ , you’ve got another thing coming.” And Mello _meant_ it. Matt could tell by the steel in his eyes and the stance he took.

Any dealer within a hundred mile radius that so much as _spoke_ to Matt was a dead man. 

And suddenly, Matt hated him. _Hated him_ for doing this to him. 

Before, it seemed ridiculous to kill someone over a couple of grams.

Now, he wanted nothing more than to bash Mello’s face in for fucking _doing this to him_. He needed that fix. Needed those bugs under his skin. His dilated pupils and shaky vision. 

“Don’t you _dare_ try to pull your fucking shit on me,” Matt hissed, and Mello laughed underneath him. A short, striking thing that made him want to vomit. Mello was an asshole. Mello was a _fucking asshole_. He hated his twisted, beautiful, sharp face. He hated how easy it was for him to worm his way into everybody’s fucking _head_. 

Fingers in Mello’s hair, Matt _pulled_. Golden locks, tense between his fingers. He tugged again for good measure, and admired the way his best friend’s head bobbed with each yank. 

Mello didn’t make a sound, but his lips were twisted into a feral scowl, legs kicking and flailing as Matt pulled off of him and whipped him around on the couch. Shaky breathing. That’s all he got. Shaky breaths and sharp gasps that made his chest heave.

Matt could fucking _kill him_.

“Can’t get on with out your pills, yeah? You fucking _cocksucker,”_ Mello sneered.

Matt never thought he could hit someone so hard. 

Mello’s head snapped to the side, and Matt was breathing so heavily, so fucking livid that he was seeing red. On the back of his tongue, adrenaline told him to get the fuck out of here. In his limbs, the high told him to fuck Mello up. 

He always ended up listening to the drugs, anyway. 

And would he bring a gun into this?  


Well, the handcuffs were already involved. 

He wanted to fuck Mello up.

Fuck him up just as much as he threatened to fuck Matt up. Because Mello could get into anyone’s head, but he forgot that the boy pinning him down right now was a Wammy’s kid, too. That he had the same, perturbed look in his eyes as any other son of a bitch that made it to the top.

Matt snatched his friend’s Beretta right off of him, and flicked the safety off. 

Even with the gun pressed underneath his chin, Mello didn’t show a bit of fear. In fact, he pressed his skin against it until it left a pretty, red circle. 

“Go ahead, I don’t give a shit.”

“God, you’re such a fucking _bitch_.”

“Junkie.”

“Fucking _fag_.”

And that got something out of him. Because they both knew it. They both knew how it repulsed Mello, to touch a woman. Matt would fuck anyone that so much as asked. 

And in this case, maybe someone that didn’t.

Gun sliding down to his chest, Matt ran his fingers against the edge of Mello’s throat.

He didn’t make a sound, but Matt could feel his pulse against his fingertips, slamming against his skin. 

Mello spread his legs. Matt slid between.

Matt was playing a game, and Mello let it run its course. 

He was daring Matt to do his worst.

“You’re high.”

Matt’s eyes, glassy and dark, lit up. His body pinned Mello to the couch. “Fucking _so_?”

“Who sold it to you?”

Matt slipped the gun lower, and Mello sneered. His hips twitched in anticipation, and Matt felt the heat curl into his stomach.

“Go ahead, shoot me.”

“Too boring.”

The gun pressed in between Mello’s legs, and what should have been a gasp caught itself in his throat, drawling out past his lips as a terrible whimper.

Matt grinned, lopsided and drugged the fuck up, digging the barrel of that gun right into Mello’s crotch. Now, there was no noise, except the sound of Mello’s quickened breaths, short and hollow, thin pants that ghosted between them. 

He wanted to pull the trigger. 

He wanted to beat the shit out of him.

_Mello_ did this to him. 

Drugged the fuck up. The heroin coursed through him, and he was borderline lethargic, but the coke started to kick in, and it helped give him a pick me up.    
Fuckin’ eight balls. 

“Let me go.” 

Matt’s eyes flickered to Mello’s arms. No movement. His groin was hot, thick with anticipated pleasure. Mello’s mouth, parted and baring shiny, grotesque teeth, stared right at him. 

He could have tried, at least, to get out.

And if he wanted to, he would have.

A broken thumb was nothing in exchange for freedom from this. Matt would think so, anyway. And it’s not his wrists that move, but his _hips_. Right against the barrel of the gun, forcing _up_ , and Matt’s hand moved with them, jolting up just that much under the action. In the chair, Matt lurched forward.

He dug back down, and finally, there it was.

“ _Fuck_.”

Was this how Mello felt, choking the life out of him, beating the hell out of him until he could barely think straight? The rush of control surged through him, a jolt down his spine and up his arms. And he understood, now, what Mello was addicted to.

Everyone had their vices. And Mello, Mello _knew_ he was fucked like this, and Matt, fear and adrenaline thick on his tongue, knew exactly what he was doing. He was, they both knew at the very least, doing this on purpose. To give Mello a taste of his own medicine.

Lust?

Revenge?

Spite?

Matt couldn’t answer. All he knew was that he was high as fuck, and his hand was pushing a pistol against Mello’s cock, relishing in the way the older boy squirmed beneath it. His face tinted a patchy red, and his mouth parted to suck in trembling, awful breaths.

“You get off to this?” Matt hummed.

“Let me go,” he said again, forceful, this time jerking at the handcuffs behind his back. His hips rolled up, hard enough to move Matt’s hand back. 

Matt sneered, and dug again. “Shut the fuck up.”

Pleasure. Mello rutted against the barrel of his Beretta, his face beet red, body trying to get _more_. Each movement of Matt’s hand, his body, just his eyes fucking devouring him killed him. 

“ _Let me go_!” This wasn’t good. Like this, Matt had complete control over him. 

The feeling of absolute helplessness curled that same lonely sensation in the middle of his chest, and he wanted _out_.

But he wanted to see the worst Matt could do.

And right now, it was pretty damned bad. 

“And let you kick my ass? Yeah, right,” he scoffed, and he leaned in. 

Mello’s mouth dropped open, and his eyes snapped to Matt’s lips.

“Matt,” Mello warned, because the gun could get his dick blasted off, but there were, for his psyche, much worse things. 

Like Matt, dipping down and catching their lips together in a kiss that was all lust and tongue. Mello’s tongue twitched in return, lips and teeth parting to let him in. A mistake. All a fucking mistake. It was slow, taunting, showing Mello what he could do, how he could feel, if they were kind to each other. 

Wasn’t it fucking humiliating, to have his first kiss with Matt be with his hands locked behind his back and a gun pressed against his dick. 

_I’m letting him ruin me_.

Matt spread his legs apart, his fingers digging into the knobs of his knees, over leather, up, against the inside of his thighs. The gun was gone, safety back on and tossed across the floor like a broken toy.

“ _Stop_.”

“Why?” 

“Matt, _no_ ,” he spat, trying to sink against the couch. Matt grabbed him by the front of his belt and pulled him forward. “ _Matt, stop it! You fucking shit!_ “ 

Matt fucking _grabbed him_. 

The gasp came out so quick, so sudden, that he felt his face burn, and he could practically see the smirk crawling onto Matt’s lips. 

“You’re hard, babe.”

_Babe_.

Mello couldn’t do this. 

Mello couldn’t fucking do this. 

_Stop, you’re scaring me_.

_No, keep going. Keep going and fuck me up_.

He arched his back to try and do _something_ , but Matt’s hands slipped past his pants and against his boxers, groping at his cock.

Oh, fuck, he was really fucking hard.

Matt squeezed, and he twitched in his hand. Matt rubbed at him, moving against his boxers with slow strokes that kept fucking _pushing him_.

“ _Oh_ ,” Matt grunted, rubbing, pushing harder, _harder_ , until Mello thrusted up and let out a noise somewhere between a groan and a whine. 

He didn’t look frightened at all. If anything, Matt looked _exhilarated_ , like he’d been waiting for this. Like it was going right to his dick, to have Mello beneath him, pleading and gasping and completely helpless. 

Matt dipped down again, and Mello tried to pull back, thrusting his hips frantically still against his best friend’s hand. “Matt. Matt, no, I…my pants, I—“ 

Matt kissed him again. 

_Fuck._

Mello came with his tongue in Matt’s mouth, warmth spilling against his lips in the form of a satisfied groan. His hips twitched, trying to ride out the orgasm, breaths short and frantic as soon as his roommate pulled away from him. 

_I’m scaring myself._

He couldn’t make eye contact.

Head bowed, eyes locked on his own lap, Mello stayed perfectly silent.

“Mel?” 

Finally, he laughed. Breathless, mouth twisted into a humorless smile. “You’re into some fucked up shit, Jeevas.”

Matt’s name tore through him. He wanted to fucking die, because Mello still, _still_ didn’t make a move to get away from him. Still, regret sank in. Fingers laced into blond hair, and tugged his head up. Enough to do it, not enough to hurt.

Mello abhorred him.

_Fuck_. “No, I…” he trailed off, and Mello’s eyes narrowed. Matt knew he was getting too close, his hand slipping to his best friend’s throat, and his lips ghosting across his cheek bone. He felt Mello’s face twist against him. 

“You think I did this to myself?” Mello whispered, hoarse and shaky. 

“What?” 

Mello laughed, disgustingly empowered by Matt’s shock, rolled his tongue against his lower lip. Fuck, his mouth still tasted like him. “Branden’s gang caught me at a convenience store. Drugged me the hell up, and had a lady tie me to a chair.”

Matt’s eyes widened. He understood, now. And the parallel ripped electricity down his spine. His eyes darted to the way Mello’s hands were cuffed behind him. 

“No clothes, no nothing,” he whispered. His eyes blew wide, and the smirk on his face danced into a grotesque, toothy grin. “Y’know what it’s like to have a woman force her hands between your legs and fuck you while you’re about to fuckin’ gouch?” 

Matt felt sick.

This was wrong.

He felt filthy.

“No, I…I…” This was so, so fucked up. “Can I kiss you?” _Please, let me make this better._

_I wasn’t thinking_.

“No.”

~~

Mello cracked his neck and eased one hand against the other. _Just do it quick_. Christ, he was going to kill Matt. In his panic, he stormed out, leaving him cuffed and on the couch. 

Fucking stupid.

The poor son of a bitch looked like he was going to be sick.

He rolled his thumb, and snapped. It stung, and he pulled, hand wrenching itself out of the cuffs. 

Good enough to get on a motorcycle? He was about to find out. A bobby pin took care of the other half of the cuffs.   


He needed to leave, before he put a bullet through Matt’s head. 

His underwear was still soaked, and Matt’s lips against him still lingered. He could fucking _kill him._

Mello’s gut swirled, and he wanted more. 

That was disgusting. 

Mello had to have been fucking insane. 

He could have gotten away. He could have pulled back and beaten the ever living shit out of Matt. He was fucked up, because he let him do it. Because he fantasized about the idea of Matt’s hands on his body, he slipped, and let Matt do it. 

His hands felt exactly like Mello thought they would.

Mello locked the handcuffs in his bedroom, and changed his clothes with shaky hands. 

He already knew he was going to have to go to the hospital. Rod had secured him with fake paperwork, and if there was an issue, he had enough cash in his savings to pay the fees up front. 

In the mirror behind the door, he stared at himself, in his fresh pair of boxers. The marks littering his body were beginning to fade, leaving the scars to his mind. It was better that way, he supposed. For him, the visual reminder was worse. Having to look at the shit covering him, marking him like the sorry son of a bitch he was.   


Marking him like a sinner.

He rolled his eyes at the idea. His hand throbbed, and he knew this wasn’t something he could just pop back into place. Fake identification in the back of his wallet, he plucked it out and stared. 

Mark Ross.

It worked well enough, he supposed. He was certainly young enough to play Rod’s son, though they looked absolutely nothing alike. But half of the doctors, hell, half of LA bought from Ross in some way or another.

They wouldn’t question him.

His thumb began to sting.

Okay, he’d better get going.

~

Mello was gone when Matt got back.

Maybe he’d stay gone. 

Whatever.

The door cracked open three hours later. Mello was silent. Boots came off at the door, coat hung on the rack beside him.

Deathly silent.

Mello shuffled across the apartment, towards the kitchen. Matt didn’t look up from his game.

Mello didn’t ask him to.

They didn't mention the handcuffs.

He heard a shot glass clink against the counter, and the crack of a fresh bottle of whisky. 

“You went out,” Matt finally said. Silently, they both knew he was asking fucking _how_.

Wordless, Mello poured a shot, knocked it back, and then another. Hell, he didn’t even turn around. All he did was extend his arm to the side, flashing a hand brace before taking the shot. Oh, shit. 

He broke his own fucking thumb.

The other half, he probably used a pick on.

“You do that yourself?”

Another shot. Mello screwed the cap back on. He coughed, wincing at the stinging sweet taste of whisky, and shivered. 

“Do I look like a fucking doctor?”

Matt never caught a glimpse of Mello’s eyes. He looked back at his game, and Mello’s footsteps moved towards the bedroom. The lock turned, and Matt pulled his ass off the couch to grab his smokes.

Mello broke his own fucking hand.

Whatever.

~~

Matt completely forgot about the fucking date.

He showed up fifteen minutes late, no flowers, no nothing except himself in too tight black pants that he’d grown out of a few months ago, and a wrinkled white dress shirt. 

Still, she was delighted to see him.

They never even got to the restaurant. She invited him in for a glass of champagne, popped open a bottle, and seemed content to just sit at the kitchen table and drink the night away.

That was more than alright with Matt.

“You like it here?” he asked, and downed another glass. As soon as it hit the table, she was filling it up again.   


No concept of money. No concept of moderation. 

Matt couldn’t say a damned thing. By this point, he was drunk. He’d popped a couple of pills before he left, and just looking at her, he knew he was fucked. Everything moved a little too fast and was a little too bright.

He could at least tell, though, that he wouldn’t puke.

She smiled, but the similarity to Mello was chilling. Before she opened her mouth, he knew the answer. 

“Zakk gives me everything I need.”

“But are you happy?” 

She shrugged. She was too young, to be involved with the family.

Matt almost snorted at the thought. Yeah, too young, alright.

Matt nearly forgot that he wasn’t going to be seventeen for another few months. 

And God, wasn’t that disgusting. 

She wanted to change the subject.

She brushed her fingers over the bruise beneath his eye. When she leaned in, he smelled champagne and cheap perfume. The look in her eyes and the shake of her hands said she was just as drunk as Matt. “What happened?” 

“Fist fight.” A nail hit the scar on his nose. He wanted her off of him. She was beautiful, until she pushed into his business. 

They ended up in the bedroom. “Who could hit your beautiful face?” she whispered, and she shoved him down onto the bed. No, not exactly. Her hands pressed his chest, and he let her bring the two of them down. Her thighs were hot, soft, resting against him. 

On his lap, she was sweet and lovely.

He laughed. “Happens a lot.”

“Mhm?” she hummed, and their lips were together. 

Oh, fuck. 

Oh, he was dead if she told.

No, she wouldn’t.

She’d be dead, too. 

“We could run away,” she whispered, hot against his ear. She wanted to fuck him, and he was half tempted to just say yes. Yes, he’d do anything for her pretty little face. “You’re unhappy, right?” she hummed. 

He rolled his hips up, and her hands slid beneath his shirt. “I…”

“Matthew…”

_But man, he never smiles anymore_.

“Babe. Babe, I can’t,” he gasped against what his body told him. He pushed back, sliding up against the headboard. 

She looked crushed. “Are you happy here?” she whispered. The family hunched her shoulders, and killed the light in her eyes. In a sense, he saw himself. Still, she touched him.

He wanted to go home.

“My friend. He needs me.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“He doesn’t have to.”

“Is he the one that does this?”

Silence.

Women were always too intuitively observant. 

“You don’t deserve that, love.”

_You’re into some fucked up shit, Jeevas._

Oh, God, if only she knew. 

_Let go of me! Matt, fucking let go of me!_

“I don’t want him to be lonely.”

_Matt, stop it! You fucking shit!_

“Are you happy?” 

“He deserves to be.”

_Matt, no, my pants, Matt, I—_

“Matt, are _you_ happy?”

“I need to go home.”


	10. Contrition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You don’t do that to someone you love."

Mello realized, with the feeling of Matt’s hands still on him, that this wasn’t going to work. He wasn’t angry. No, he’d _let_ Matt. He’d given him silent permission, in his own way. But that box in the back of his head was overflowing. Each little piece that he’d folded up and tucked away came tumbling out. He’d dipped his fingers into danger and was swept away. Sent tumbling down a path that made him _sick_.

And he’d _enjoyed_ it. 

Disease disguised as desire ran white hot through him, corroding the boundaries he’d so carefully built up. Mello’d wanted it. Wanted that desperation that made his cock pulse and his body writhe against Matt’s in a twisted display of desire. 

He’d stolen a cigarette from Matt’s pack, and he’s sure his roommate noticed, but he lit it without a care, smoking it in slow, careful drags.

This is all life was, wasn’t it? 

Killing and dying and fucking himself up until even Matt couldn’t put up with it anymore. And hell, didn’t he know this was coming. He watched from the fire escape, as Matt leaned against the hood of his car. Chain smoking shitty cigarettes that couldn’t have been more than six dollars a pack. 

He was so fucked up. 

Mello jammed out the cigarette on the railing next to his knuckles. Ash crumbled over rusted metal, and wind swept it to the floor. He hated the way the taste of tar and nicotine lingered on the back of his tongue, coiling in nauseating swirls in his stomach. 

He should cut out the middle man and just kick him out now. 

Didn’t matter how it happened—the end result would be the same. 

This was something he was meant to do alone. Had been from the start, and there was no which way to say that he was wrong. And Mello’d tried. He’d really fucking tried. But this was his battle, and Matt was something else entirely. 

Just as destructive, but something different.

Mello could shoot himself, for letting his happen. 

His mind raced with the thought of his body bent over, pressed harsh to the kitchen table, Matt’s hips flush against his. The way that he would scream and writhe and beg, his hands pinned while Matt prodded into him and fucked him. What it would _feel like_.

He let Matt completely, destructively blur the lines between them. 

He’d tried.

For so long, he’d tried to keep Matt out of it. Out of his fucking _head_.

And now, Matt was a part of him. 

Mello almost laughed. Yeah, he was a fucking part of him, alright. With his hand around Mello’s cock, his eyes burning a hole right through him while his childhood friend bucked his hips and moaned beneath him.

Yeah, sure as hell counted as a part of him.

Matt opened the door, and Mello slunk back inside.

Might as well make it quick.

He couldn’t kill Matt, too.

“Get out.” No context, no nothing. Matt would pick up on it.

“What? Man, I’m not smoking, fucking—“ Or not.

“Pack your shit, and get out.” 

Matt cracked his neck, and laughed. What the fuck for? Mello narrowed his eyes. If Matt wasn’t going to do it, he’d do it for him. He got to the coffee table, and clicked three of the laptops shut before none too gracefully pulling the cords from the sides. 

He should have gotten the hint. Matt rushed over and yanked the laptop in his hands away, putting it back on the table and opening it back up. “Dude, what the fuck?”

_Go away_.

“I don't want you here.”

“You’re _firing_ me.” 

Mello sneered, and barked out a laugh. If that’s what he wanted to call it. This was more than a job now, and the both of them knew it. “Yes, I’m fucking firing you. Now get.”

“No.”

Everything had to be fucking difficult with him.

“Fuck you.”

“Yeah, whatever man, I’ll go and fuck myself later, I ain’t fuckin’ budging.”

“I don’t want you here." He could see the beginning of disdain beginning to bubble up in Matt’s irises. Liquidated rage that made Matt strong enough to ruin him.

It felt _so_ fucking good. Mello wanted to take a swing.“Dude—“ 

Who gave a shit, if they got in another fight?

Mello didn’t notice until he was on top of Matt, his hand around the other boy’s throat, that he didn’t attempt to swing back once.

Even more reason for him to leave.

And if Mello wanted him to leave, then he was going to fucking leave. 

It’s when his face turned red that he threw his weight up, knocking Mello off of him. Still, he held Mello down, but there was no retaliation.

So Mello pushed. “Fight back.” _Defend yourself. Don’t just let me beat the hell out of you_ ,

“No.”

“Fight _back_!” 

“Mello, chill the fuck out and talk to me.”

Mello laughed sharp, piercing, so fucking mad that he was seeing red. His body writhed underneath him, his pelvis thrusting harsh against Matt’s hips. He couldn’t even pretend to think this was sexual. Skin crawled and nerves twisted, dancing hectic, telling waves of nausea through his gut.

“That what you wanted when your hand was around my dick?” 

Yeah, that struck the right chord. 

Matt froze above him, but his grip fucking _tightened_ , to the point where Mello gasped at the sudden pressure. Panic bloomed across his freckled face. Just as quickly, it morphed itself into hurt. Pursed lips sat thin in acknowledgement of what he’d done. Of the lines that’d become blurred, bastardized between them. 

And sure, Mello’d fucking _let_ him.

But did Matt know that?

Mello could get under anyone’s skin. 

Matt stared down at him, those stupid goggles unable to hide the frantic despair in his eyes. “No…I…I…No, I didn’t mean…” Matt’s voice dropped, weak, trembling, that hold ever present on Mello’s body. 

Give it a few more pushes, and Mello wouldn’t have to struggle at all. 

“It felt good, right?” 

“No, I—“

“Look at me.”

Matt’s eyes snapped right back to him. 

“I saw the fucking way your face lit up, shoving my own Beretta against my fucking dick. Got a kick out of it, right? You _liked_ to see me like that, liked the idea of making me fucking cream my pants while I screamed with my hands cuffed behind my back.” 

The grip loosened, but Mello didn’t budge, because Matt still didn’t fucking _get off and leave_.

“Mello.” 

_Leave. Just get the fuck out_. 

“I’m so sorry.” 

_Go away_.

No. No, this was not supposed to happen. Matt’s eyes went wide, panicked, welling with tears that either of them rarely saw. 

He scrambled off of Mello, until the back of his legs hit the couch, and his arms coiled around himself. _Oh, no_.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like that.”

That licked a new streak of anger in Mello’s gut. Wasn’t supposed to _be like that_? Fucking _grand_. “You wanted to fuck me, right? Wanted to watch me fucking take it like a _slut_. You’re sick.” 

He couldn’t even tell what the look in Matt’s eyes was. The mantra of “ _I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please, please stop it I’m so sorry_ ,” rang through their otherwise silent apartment, and Mello could do nothing more than watch. 

“Fine, stay. I don’t give a fuck.”

~~  


“I didn’t mean it,” Mello whispered from behind the couch, and Matt just shook his head. His fingers clacked away at the keyboard, running script after script that Mello’s sure he’d already done before. His fingers scraped at the leather cushions, nails digging against the worn surface. Branden’s apartment complex flashed over the screen. Disgusting. Matt was focused on _something_ now, but didn’t have the desire to ask _what._

“You did.”

His goggles still sat broken on the floor, kicked to the side with an empty box of cereal and a few empty cans of Red Bull. Mello cleared his throat. Tension “No, I—“

Matt turned, looking over his shoulder. And that was when the smell of cheap vodka really hit him. Dilated pupils, his roommate stared up at him with wet, bloodshot eyes. “Shut the fuck up. I saw the look on your face,” Matt said, but despite the words, his voice was gentle. “I know you, Mello. You meant every word of that.”

_But I didn’t. God, forgive me, I didn’t_. 

God, he was fucking insane for doing this to Matt. His hands inched off of the couch and onto Matt’s shoulders. He tensed, and Mello couldn’t blame him. He spotted the empty bottle of vodka on the floor, and knew Matt wouldn’t remember a word of this conversation. Even like this, his body was swaying under Mello’s grip. 

Trashed.

That didn’t make anything in the present any better. 

But Matt needed comfort, and Mello didn’t _do_ comfort.

When he circled around to the other side of the couch, Matt tried to look away. His back sank into the seat, as if that would get him further away from his fucking insane excuse for a friend. “Mello,” he rasped out, but by the look in his eyes, Mello wasn’t sure if he even remembered opening his mouth by the time the next set of words finished processing. 

Mello was fucking neurotic.

Matt was too drunk to think.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he slurred out, but the words were jumbled together and pathetic. A piece of Matt’s mind tried to make sense of everything, but couldn’t even figure out where the fuck he was supposed to look. It was pathetic, and Mello hated that Matt could push himself to this point. 

He’d kill himself, like this.

Mello sat next to him on the couch. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not.”

“Yeah,” Mello muttered, and with a slow hand, wrapped his arm around Matt’s shoulders. “It’s shit,” he agreed, vague.

Matt didn’t even notice. “Because, like, Mello, I knew you loved me, and I still…” he choked on his words, but by now, Mello’s eyes were locked on his face, wide, his jaw so tight that it ached. “I shouldn’t have hurt you, because you loved me, and you trusted me, and we’ve always only had each other, and—“

“Shut _up_.”

His mouth snapped shut, but the tears kept running down his face.

There was nothing more disgusting than watching a man hit rock bottom, absolutely piss ass drunk without a clue what he was saying.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“No, because I…I…”

Mello watched him like a hawk, silently begging _Please, Matt, please don’t fucking say anything stupid while you’re like this_.

“Mello, like, I really fucking love you.” Before Mello could intervene, there were more words, hitting him so harshly, so quickly that he had no time to retaliate. “You don’t _do that_ to someone you love. What the fuck am I? I get my temper worked up, and I force my best friend to fuck around with me? I fucking cuff him and humiliate him and—“

He held up a hand. “Don’t.” And that was that. “Just… _stop_.”

Matt bawled like a child.

Bawled until his eyes shone a bright, sopping red. And what the hell was Mello supposed to do? When he shifted, it was awkward, brash, something too forceful to be gentle. 

Matt reeked of alcohol.

Fingers slipped against fingers, and Matt clung.

Twisting into Mello like a disjointed fucking mess of limbs, Matt ghosted heavy breaths over his face. 

“What—“

“Hurt me.”

Matt laughed, bitter, and Mello’s chest ached with twisted desire. The words rang as a command through Mello’s head, and he slipped his legs onto either side of his poor son of a bitch of a friend, and dropped his weight right onto Matt’s lap. He could tell, by the look in his eyes, that he was petrified.

_Hurt me_.

And that’s what Mello wanted, wasn’t it?

His mouth dipped, and sank bone into Matt’s throat. 

~

Matt woke up at seven in the morning, groggy, obviously hung over and body so damaged by the alcohol that his hands shook while he walked. Trembling, his body begging _please sleep, please rest._ When he moved, his limbs swayed, still not used to the idea of being sober. If he could call himself that, right now. Mello, still asleep on the couch, didn’t drag himself into bleary consciousness until he heard the shower slam off. 

Mello pulled himself to his feet, a crick in his neck and his back thrown off balance. He splashed water on his face in the kitchen sink, tied his hair into a messy bun, and pulled on an old, worn out pair of jeans. 

He didn't want to have whatever conversation would follow yesterday’s shit show string of events. It’d be more tears, half assed apologies, or weighted silence that would drive him absolutely fucking insane. Yanking on a shitty pair of sneakers, he made his way out of the apartment and to the parking lot. The cover was still on his motorcycle, and in the back seat of Matt’s trunk was all of the mechanic supplies. 

Maybe, he could fix the engine.

The engine probably wasn’t even broken. 

No, the engine _definitely_ wasn’t broken.

He started taking the bike apart, piece by piece, laying each thing in a different spot around him. 

He could use a drink.

It wasn’t even eight in the morning. 

Mello cracked his neck, and grabbed the machine oil from the trunk. His body dragged, numb with the reminder of what he’d done. No, of what he and Matt, what _they_ had done. 

And he’d adored it.

Mello felt spiders. Spiders crawling under his skin and through his gut. The withdrawals got better, replaced instead with sinking anxiety and that all too familiar, crushing loneliness. 

He double checked to make sure he had all the pieces, and started to put the engine back together. 

Anything he could do to kill some time. 

“You’ll fry her like that.” 

Mello’s fingers tightened around the wrench, but he kept working. No reason to turn around. His head throbbed well and good enough to remind him of the night before. He didn’t need Matt’s face to fucking rub it in, too. On his throat, a deep purple bruise crawled on top of his skin, stinging, mocking, spitting words in his ears that made him want to claw it right off. 

_Faggot_.

He pulled _something_ out, and it must have been the wrong damned thing, because Matt was rushing over to the motorcycle, peering down with him. “Man, you’re gonna break it.”

“I don’t give a fuck.”

“You’re gonna give a fuck when you can’t ride it later.”

_Wouldn’t be the first fucking thing I was riding_.

He wanted to puke. 

Matt sent his heart right into his throat. Pounding, aching and clawing at itself with an acidic burn that was near paralyzing.

Wasn’t it awful, that this hit him harder than murder. 

Mello tried to turn it _off_ , because that was always easiest. To tuck this, along with everything else, into that neat little black box. He shut his eyes, hand clutched tight around the wrench. He could bash it into Matt’s skull.

That box had been smashed to bits the moment Matt had touched him.

Words, useless, lingered unspoken between them. 

_I’m sorry_.

_I’m sorry, for doing something like that to you_.

Mello, hands covered in machine oil, rolled his head towards Matt. The ponytail kept his neck cool, but the front still fell in his eyes. 

Matt wouldn’t make eye contact.

_I’m fucked up. I’m so fucking fucked up_.

Even when he sat down next to Mello, he wouldn’t look. He looked hungover, and his hands shook while his body tried to process everything. 

Alcohol poisoning? 

Maybe, he was still drunk. 

Mello wasn’t going to ask. Instead, he handed the wrench to Matt, who focused his attention on the half taken apart motorcycle. He sighed, soft and hardly irritated, before getting to work. “Watch me, so you can do it next time.”

“Sure.” 

Mello sat, and Matt worked at his side, rolling his sleeves up to reveal those goddamned track marks and lines of red that danced up his forearms.

_I did this to you_.

“Was it the cylinder? She might have something else going on, but it looks like it’d run fine.”

Mello doesn’t even hear him. He was fixated, his eyes locked on Matt’s face, on the _mark_ , on the blemishes across his limbs.

_Dear fucking God, I did this to you_.

“It’s been loud. Muffler?” Matt was talking more to himself now, climbing to his feet to circle around the bike.

Mello’s eyes followed. Matt’s sneakers scuffed the ground while he walked, and his hands scratched at his jeans. 

_Forgive me_.

“Mello?”

He had no idea how long he’d been staring.

_God, please, please fucking forgive me this one time._

“Uhuh?” 

“You weren’t listening.”

He blinked once, twice, his eyes moving lazily up to Matt’s.

“Oh.”

“Are you hungover?” Matt asked softly. Even the mention of the night before didn't sit well.

“Sure.”

A lie. They both knew that. 

Matt sat back beside him. Still, no eye contact. “You’re upset.”

“No shit.”

Matt’s laugh was dry, but at least it was something. His hand traced up his neck, over the purple and red mark. “And this?” It stood out, mocking him, deep in his skin telling him exactly what the _fuck_ was wrong with him. 

“We went out.”

“Don’t lie. This was from you.”

Mello swallowed, his saliva tacky and thick on the back of his tongue. He was too tired for a fight. Besides, Matt already put the pieces together. “Yeah. It was.”

“Why?”

Mello snickered, and shook his head. It wasn’t malicious, and Matt seemed to understand that. His hand reached out, running over the ridges in one of the bike’s tires. “You asked me to.” In a sense, sure.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s fine.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure.”

That was the best either of them were going to do. Matt finished the bike in silence.

Mello didn’t bother to watch. 

“I can leave, if you want.”

“Do you want to?” Mello asked, exhausted all over again. Matt packed up everything and stuffed it back into his trunk with little to no care. His toolbox clunked around loudly, and he slammed the trunk shut. He seemed to think about it, going so far as to light himself up a smoke and lean against the car while he contemplated. 

It made Mello’s stomach sink. 

“No, I don’t.”

“Why?” It was Mello’s turn to ask, and he hated how the word rolled off of his tongue. 

Matt shrugged, his long red and white lines staring Mello in the face. 

“Because I’m happy here.”

Mello could laugh.

He God damn hated himself. 

Matt smoked one, two, then three cigarettes before Mello stood up to join him. “Then you’re an idiot,” Mello said finally, eyes tracing the way Matt’s lips held onto his smoke. 

“Maybe.”

Mello adored him. And everything he adored, he destroyed. He took slow, heavy steps towards Matt and his bright red car, and his roommate watched every second, eyes drooped and hazy, body still clinging to the automobile to stabilize himself. 

Had to have been hungover as all hell.

Matt, with his junkie eyes and his sharp face, was beautiful. With that shit all over his arms, and his unkempt hair. They were, more or less, products of a flawed society. One destroyed himself while the other destroyed everything around him. 

Mello leaned in. 

Matt pulled his cigarette out of his mouth. 

Mello lingered for only a second, his lips just over Matt’s, before closing the space between them. It was a miracle, that Matt shifted to kiss him back. Their mouths lingered, melancholic, painfully, destructively sluggish against one another.

Neither of them were sure what the hell this meant, if it had to mean anything at all. With Matt’s tongue pushing against Mello’s lips and past his teeth, and Mello’s hands siding up Matt’s back, it was probably something to the effect of _I’m sorry_.

They had no idea how to say that shit the right way. 

Lips apart, Mello’s hands wrapped around Matt’s body, arms locking to his torso and their cheeks pressed to one another.

Matt rubbed circles into his back, and Mello fell apart.

He didn’t cry. God, he wouldn’t have been able to live with himself. But his nails dug into Matt’s back, and his mouth went dry, anything he wanted to say dying on his lips. 

“Matt.”

“Uhuh?” 

_I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry_.

“Forget it.”


	11. Coil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lips curled into a smile, eyes shining with a childish, high induced curiosity. “You’re not trying to protect me, are you?”

Smoke poured past Matt’s lips.

From his mouth, he exhaled poison. From his chest, dilapidated memories tainted by guilt. While Mello slept, he worked. In two to three hour doses, he napped. 

Mello was no warmer than before their incident, and Matt was no less interested in ingesting whatever the fuck he could to send himself on a trip. 

Matt’seyes scanned over a map of Branden’s apartment complex. Nice. Real fucking nice, especially for New York City. This is what they’d be like, in another few years. Mello’d have a fucking penthouse, his face no longer a dead giveaway to his far too young age. 

Mello, he found, never cut him off. Empty threats, with an even emptier bite. Mello was _good,_ too. Twisted the words just right so they’d dig under his skin, bounce around in his head, taunt him behind closed eyes. But Matt, now, was used to it. 

The horror of his hand between Mello’s legs, the feeling of his come against the thin fabric of his boxers—all of that was gone. Ironic, that he could track down a woman for fucking him without any remorse for what _he’d_ done to his poor son of a bitch of a friend.

But they’d apologized, in their own way. Sort of.

“You want him dead,” Matt hummed, and it didn’t take a genius to figure who it was about. 

“Not yet.”

Matt’s lips quirked into a grotesque smile. “Well?”

“I want to rip everything he owns from under his feet.”

“He has two sisters, and a teenage brother.”

Mello shuffled out of the room, and came back with paperwork for a money wire. “Call Rashual Bid. Wire him ten grand, and get rid of them.”

For a moment, Matt’s stomach sinks. He’s pulled up their profiles—two smiling, young women, and a boy with glasses too big for his face, and teeth spaced too far apart.

They couldn’t know a damned thing about his business. 

But revenge was revenge, and Matt was simply working as a tool to push Mello’s agenda. 

“Alright.”

“Ask him to send back one photo of each. Printed. Rod’s safe house. We’ll confirm, then burn the images.”

Mello didn’t blink an eye.

Matt followed in his footsteps, and made the call.

~~

He’d always carried out hits that had a reason. Boyfriend ran away with a “good for nothing whore”, someone owed a little too much, the normal things. Jobs no one else wanted, but shit Matt needed the paycheck from. 

Staring at the smoggy Los Angeles skyline, Matt smoked a joint until his eyes stung a puffy, bloodshot red. The floor spun, and the whole world warped right along with it. 

This time, Matt’d annihilated an entire family.   
And Mello had gone from guilt, to an attempt at preserving Matt’s morality. Tears, to a cold hearted assassination. 

The switch was almost immediate. 

Mello had shattered. He’d had his breakdown, the rug torn from under his feet. Now, it was time to glue all of the pieces back together. It was a meltdown, just like any other. The same as when L’d gotten himself sent six feet under. The same as when Matt had helped him pack his bags and sent him off from Wammy’s front gate.

But it was a cycle. Dropping the mirror and trying to piece it back together over and over again.

In the process, Matt could see that more than a few pieces had gone missing. Some, he, himself had played more than a significant role in. 

His hand, stretched over his head, looked like it belonged to a different body. Bone thin, purpled veins dancing across his flesh and over his wrist, the rest hidden by a faded, tattered hoodie. Some nails sat too long, others bitten down, all certainly nothing close to maintained. For a while, he wanted to keep the pinky long for coke. 

Someone he’d hooked up with told him that was too damned obvious.

He wanted Mello, in the way that a child wanted something that it could not have. He could have his body. Has had his body. But there was no warmth. No nothing that made Mello what he used to be. 

That, he shouldn’t have been thinking about after what he’d done. 

It didn’t matter. He ran his hands through his hair, auburn with deep chestnut roots, too long, too wavy and coarse against his fingertips. It really didn’t fucking matter. His ribs jutted out when he ran his hands over his shirt, the fabric soft, gentle against his skin. 

He could love Mello, if he tried hard enough. And he was an idiot. Because if he loved Mello, then he’d do anything for him. 

And perhaps, he was there already.

Mello, boarded up in his room, always busy, nearly always silent, seemed a world away. Before, he’d been close. So terrifyingly close that Matt had indulged, and taken everything that he could. Mello’s lips, his body, anything that his friend would let him. 

Selfish.

They were no different from each other. Matt preferred physicality, while Mello preferred power. Different things, same objective. 

Consume.

~~  


The pangs of nausea, the sweeps of anxiety, sudden depression, they all washed away in two weeks time. The normal issues, Mello could deal with. Drug induced bullshit was another story entirely. Now, it was what he was used to. And Matt. 

“They’re asking question about his daughter,” Rod pointed out over a glass of wine. Mello shifted. They shouldn’t have been meeting in the apartment. Certainly, this wasn’t a safe place, but it was an escape. Somewhere where he could toss the rest of the day right out the fucking window until he dragged himself back. 

But here, Rod sat on his beat up couch, while Matt locked himself in the bathroom as instructed. Mello already knew he’d be tweaking on God only knows what by the time he came out. _Fucking stupid_.

“I’ve heard. And the cops?”

“They’re involved ‘cause he’s a rat.”

“Christ.”

“Men like him belong six feet under.”   
And six feet under is where he’d be. “I’ll take care of it.”

It was obvious, that there was another person living here. Already, Rod knew. But his sight was on business, not the two shoes by his feet that were far too hideous to be Mello’s. Beat up canvas sneakers, scribbled on in pen. Acid drawings. The sort of shit Matt’d done as a child. 

“Rashual’s on his way to New York,” Rod noted.

“Yeah. He’s doing me a favor.”

“I bet.” Rod leaned into the couch, tattered leather that needed desperately to be cleaned. 

“How’s Lee?”

“She’s good.”

“Still kicking?”

“Enough, yeah.”

Rod probably didn’t even remember who the fuck Lee was. Women came and went, some short term, some long term. All temporary. “Your friend?”

“Decent.”

“You’ve got a hell of a set up here, kid.”

“It’s my friend’s.” 

“He around?” 

“In the shower.”   
Rod nodded, and ran his hand against his beard. “You should have him over sometime. His shit’s been gettin’ us around, right?”

“Something like that,” Mello agreed. God, he was exhausted. And God, he wanted Rod to just _go home_. “We’ll make a move soon. For Kira.”

They both understood. Once Kira was out of the way, they could own Los Angeles. Hell, the entire country. Kira went down, and Mello would disappear, leaving the mob to Rod’s hands. This was by no means a long term commitment. Mello had no interest in the family, and Rod had no interest in giving up his profits.

For now, they could get along.

And Mello, honestly, quite liked Rod. He wasn’t an intelligent man, by any means, but he was cordial enough. Everything that Mello needed, wanted, he could supply. 

Soon meant at least another year. 

With this last family out of the way, they could own Los Angeles. The underground, more or less, would be theirs. They could extend to the rest of the state, and then Vegas. And hell, if they could get in there, they wouldn’t have a damned problem in the world.

Matt, hair just short of sopping, poked his head out from the bathroom. Mello couldn’t blame him. At this point, there was no point in fucking hiding him. Jeans, and a towel hanging around his shoulder, he looked gaunt. Thinner than usual. Crack thin, really. 

“Oh. Uh, didn’t know you were still talking,” Matt mumbled, hands shoved into his pockets. 

Rod’s eyes went from Matt, then to Mello. “Your friend?”

“Yeah. That’s Matt.”

It was awkward conversation, handshakes, introductions that didn’t mean shit, until Matt excused himself to the fire escape for a cigarette.

The first thing out of Rod’s mouth was a laugh while he drained his glass of wine. 

“Christ, kid, I don’t know what the fuck made you think he _wasn’t_ on somethin’.”

~

“You’re stressed.”

_Stressed_.

Mello could fucking laugh himself to tears at that. Matt couldn’t keep his fucking nose out of anything. And now Matt, the fucking idiot, with his hands all over the Irish mob in his computer systems, was involved. He knew that his friend would do what he liked, bottom line. And what he liked to fucking do was stick his nose into everything that Mello had tried to keep away from him. 

It was a matter of one casualty versus two. 

But now, Matt had worked himself into a position where Mello _needed_ him. He didn’t have the time to get the resources without Matt, the ever pressing mantra of _what the fuck is Near doing, need to catch up need to catch up_ drumming along in the back of his head. 

Stressed was better than traumatized.

Not ideal, but better. 

He’d rather worry about Matt than white walls, white food, white clothes, white everything. “Irish fucks are in with the FBI. The head’s daughter’s caused enough of a stir already. If we try to touch them, we’re fucked.”

“But you’re already knees deep.”

“Exactly.”

“So?”

“We’ll turn them on each other from the inside out.”

Matt’s lips quirked, absolutely fascinated by the way Mello worked. He, in his heart of hearts, couldn’t give two shits about mob wars, Kira, any of it. But this was absolutely _exhilarating_ to watch. Mello, in that sense, always had a way of pulling through. “How long will that take?” 

Mello shrugged. “Who fucking knows.”

“Why don’t you just take out the top guy, and frame someone else?” Child’s play, really. “It’d be quick. And you want to catch up, don’t you?”

Matt knew Near was nowhere close to making a move yet. He cracked his neck, and watched Mello pace around the room. Now, Matt owed him. After the hurt, after the sound of Mello begging for him to stop ringing in his ears, he would do anything. Anything to be of use, anything to make it _go away_. 

It never would, and they both knew that.

Mello had too good of a memory, and drugs did little to help Matt forget.

“I’ll take care of the hit, then,” Mello hummed, throwing himself down onto the couch. “Rashual’s in New York, and Rod won’t want anyone else out.”

“One at a time?” 

Mello could do as he liked. For right now, it wasn’t possible to risk any more of Rod’s men. And besides, he wanted this job done _right_. 

“Yeah.”

“You’ll go alone?"

“That’s the plan.”

Matt, he could already tell, didn’t like that. Gloved fingers clacked away at his computer until he was reeling back towards Mello. “I’ll go.”

“Are you fucking high?”

“You shouldn’t go on your own.”

“I do it all the fucking time. I did it when I was fourteen, and I can do it again now.” 

Matt sighed. “Why would you take the risk, if you have an offer sitting right in front of you?” 

“Because…because…” Mello found himself stammering. Matt did hits. For who, he didn’t bother to ask, but he knew that his friend was no less versed in death than he. He’d made the call for Mello without hesitation. Wiped out a family without an ounce of complaint. But in the back of his head was that nagging voice that told him not to get Matt fucking involved.

For a moment, Mello hated him, for putting him in this position. Because he was _right_. There was no reason to take a risk if he had backup. And experienced backup, no less.  


“We could have it done in three days.”

Mello sealed his lips shut. Matt, he was sure, could find out exactly where to go and exactly what to do in the blink of an eye. But he didn’t _want_ that. He wanted to do it on his own. To risk his own life, not his best friend’s. 

“You don’t trust me.”

“I don’t.”

A lie.  


“I can handle myself just fine.” Matt, hunched forward, was irritated. Good. Fuck him. “I’ve never been kidnapped, either.”

_You fucking idiot_. Mello’s eyes snapped to Matt. He could hit him. He _wanted_ to hit him. “You think you can stay off of your shit long enough to be able to fucking shoot straight?” 

If he wanted low blows, Mello could deliver. They’d gotten along better as children, when desire, killing, _destruction_ hadn’t become them. Matt, infuriatingly, let it roll right off his shoulders. “Three days.”

“He lives in San Diego.”

“I know. We can drive, get him, and spend a few days making a false trail on the way back.”

He didn’t need Matt.

He could do it on his own.

Mello could do all of this on his fucking own.

But Matt had forced himself right into this, involved himself with a mess he’d only observed from the outside. “Mello,” he heard, as he stalked towards the kitchen. He craned his head, turning just enough tocatch Matt’s face, ghostly against computer screen LEDs. With his goggles on top of his head, and messy strands of auburn sticking out in every which direction, he looked ghastly, deathly sick. Crumbling. Purples shone under his eyes, and his frame hung thin, swimming underneath his clothes. 

“Uhuh?”

Lips curled into a smile, eyes shining with a childish,high induced curiosity. “You’re not trying to protect me, are you?” 

Leave it to Matt, to hit the nail right on its head. To take everything Mello tried to shove down and throw it right back in his face. The words sat thick in his chest, gnawing at his heart. “Is that what you’d like to believe?”

Matt laughed, and turned back to his work. “I think it’d be nice.” 

“It’s useless. You’ll do as you want anyway.”   
“As will you. We’ll leave in the morning?”

In that sense, they could coexist. 

“Sure, Matt.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone that's read this story and kept up with it :) It means a lot, and I'm still working away on it! My updates might be a little more spaced out, as I'm working on senior thesis currently, but I'll do my best to keep on top of everything <3


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